Should Cleveland Cavaliers Fire Tyronn Lue, Sign John Calipari In The Offseason

The Cleveland Cavaliers should fire Tyronn Lue and hire John Calipari as soon as possible.

Tyronn Lue was portrayed as the coaching savior for the Cleveland Cavaliers. Sure, he’s a guy the players can connect with because he’s young, black and a former player. He holds players accountable and let LeBron James know he was the boss in the way David Blatt never did. However, he’s not ready to be a head coach. While it won’t happen midseason, in the offseason the Cavs should fire Lue and hire John Calipari.

My personal list of grievances against Lue is lengthy and not everything has to do with his decisions on the sideline. I’ll phrase them as questions just to get you to really think about these answers and why Lue’s coaching decisions and his mistakes will cost and have costed the Cavs, repeatedly. James has a short window of time to win championships as the best player in the world and while Lue has won a NBA championship as the head coach, there are many examples of how he’s not ready for the job.

How many coaches do you know who constantly point the finger of blame at the players in post-game pressers while taking none of it upon themselves? Meanwhile, James holds himself accountable while Lue deflects all the blame to their players.

How many coaches do you know change the defensive schemes over and over, publicly citing his players’ lack of intelligence as the reason why?

How many coaches make lineup changes based on increased offensive potency then when the plan falls flat on its face, not only refuses to revert back to what works but instead lets the team play through his mistake?

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How many coaches have a player lock down virtually every point guard they played against, allowing their superstars to consistently play against favorable matchups and conserve energy along the way, only for that player to be replaced by a player with less defensive awareness and impact?

How many coaches don’t know how to manage the minutes of their best player?

How many coaches don’t know how to maximize every piece of a talented roster?

How many coaches come into the league under the tutelage of a defensive-minded head coach and then proceed to coach his team into one of the worst defensive teams in the league?

How many defensive-minded coaches stack players who are defensive liabilities or who aren’t traditionally the best three-point shooters into one lineup, even in tight games, and expect the team to succeed in a league that has as many explosive scorers as ever and defenses that take advantage of poor spacing?

How many coaches can’t win with an All-Star not named LeBron James? How many coaches have an offensive system that’s entirely too predictable?

How many coaches finish the regular season with less wins than the coach they were fired for?

Or, better yet, how many coaches have their team on pace to lose more games than they lost last season while having more talent on the team?

Not the best ones.

Lue, who fails to work on the basics with his team (free-throw shooting, contesting three-point shots, transition defense) needs to get it right or go. Calipari should be the head coach of the Cleveland Cavaliers.

I’m sure the first thing people may think is that Calipari doesn’t have NBA head coaching experience. However, while Lue has coached 106 regular season basketball games for the Cavs. Calipari has coached in 883 regular season games in the NCAA, winning 78.3 percent of his games. Calipari also was the head coach of the New Jersey Nets for three years and 184 regular season games (the 1998-99 season was a lockout-shortened season of 54 games).

Calipari was fired and replaced by assistant coach Don Casey, who didn’t fair much better while coaching a team led by Kendall Gill, Kerry Kittles and Keith Van Horn. The trio was solid but it isn’t anywhere near the Big Three he’d have in Cleveland. Van Horn, though he wasn’t nearly the rebounder Love is, was also a dominant stretch-four in his time though and Calipari would have experience coaching that type of player.

Calipari, who has recruited many-a-talented high schooler to his program at the University of Kentucky, understands how to maximize a talented roster. He’ll even use platoon swaps if he needs to. What’s the point in having talented players if you don’t know how to piece the lineups together. In addition, Calipari’s offensive systems are geared to match the personnel he has and the evolution of the game. He gets players moving their bodies frequently in the halfcourt while encouraging his team’s to get out and run in the fullcourt. That will spark the energy of the ball club when they seem in ruts.

James is a big fan of Calipari and actually considers him a friend. Calipari recruited James while he was in high school and while James may have went to Ohio State University, if he chose the college route, he could have ended up at the University of Memphis (where Calipari coached in 2003).

According to cleveland.com’s Joe Vardon, LeBron had this to say about Calipari in 2015:

"“What I admire is how he’s able to take, year after year, these high egos coming out of high school and turn it into a team,” James said of Calipari. “He makes them believe, not even believe, it’s what it should be, that the team is more important than the individual. No matter who you are, no matter where you come from, in order for the team to have success everyone has to buy in.“I love that about him, he doesn’t cap, he doesn’t put a cap on his talent, on those guys,” James continued. “He gives them the reins if they play the right way, and he wants them to succeed at the highest level. So, you can respect that.”"

For the record, Calipari wants to coach LeBron. From a 2014 interview with The Plain Dealer’s Mary Schmitt Boyer:

"“I’m not sure whether this is his last contract, or his next-to-last contract. But I would tell you if I had a chance to, I would absolutely.”"

While some may point to Calipari turning down an offer in 2014 to coach James and the Cavs, according to Kyle Tucker of the Courier-Journal, Calipari just couldn’t leave a few players who committed to him and that was the problem.

"“They came back because it was good for them and their careers and they knew they needed more developing and coaching. That was by me. That’s what they wanted,” Calipari told the paper in an interview Sunday morning in the Bahamas. “So that made it a tough deal to say, ‘I’m just going to leave these guys here.’ With who? It may be somebody I don’t know that wouldn’t do the things for them that they needed to do”."

That brings us to another point, Calipari is an extraordinary recruiter because he genuinely cares about and for the players. His first priority is the players. I could never see Calipari saying his team doesn’t have the smartest players or placing all the blame on the players every time.

The final thing to note about Calipari is the defense that he gets his teams to play. There’s no secret recipe scheme-wise. He just gets all of his players to completely buy-in to that side of the ball. There’s defensive effort in Cleveland but it waxes and wanes. Lue, for all the talk about holding his players accountable, fails to keep his team motivated.

I’m not saying Lue is a bad guy but there are too many issues that stem from his decisions and his words. I watch a Lue presser and cringe as he defers the blame to everyone else. I watch a game and cringe at the Cavs defensive intensity or energy, just a season after winning the first championship in Cleveland Cavaliers history.

Lue will have three guaranteed years left on his contract and be paid $7 million per season. The Cavs should just go ahead and eat that money while giving Calipari the 10-year, $120 million he wants. They’ll be better off for making a coaching change, you’ll see it postgame, you’ll see it in-game, you’ll see it in James’ eyes.

Would you prefer John Calipari to coach the Cleveland Cavaliers instead of Tyronn Lue, let us know in the comments section or Twitter @KJG_NBA.