Cavs: Ranking every head coach in franchise history

Cavs: Ranking every head coach in franchise history – The King’s Coaches

2. Tyronn Lue

Record: 128-83

Ty Lue used to be the most well-known for Game 1 of the 2001 NBA Finals, when Allen Iverson drained a shot in his face and then stepped over him. By 2016 he was a well-paid assistant coach on the Cavaliers who had impressed the front office enough for them to fire David Blatt in the midst of a very successful season.

Lue took over and immediately changed the entire culture of the team, giving his stars more freedom and helping them to leverage relationships and play as a unified whole. His approach worked, and the Cavs went on to the win the NBA championship, the first in franchise history. The Cavs would return to the NBA Finals in each of the next two seasons as well.

The reason Lue is not first on this list is twofold. First, for all that he was successful in leading the Cavs to the title, he also had the best player on the planet leading the way as well. More impactful is how bad Lue did in managing a team without James. He went 0-6 in the fall of 2018, clashing with the front office and refusing to accept the reality of a rebuild. He was fired and went on to the LA Clippers. Both of those qualifications are small and still see him strongly as the second-best head coach in franchise history despite coaching the team for less than three full seasons.

1. Mike Brown

Record: 305-187

Mike Brown spent time learning from Gregg Popovich as an assistant coach in San Antonio, winning a title on that staff in 2003. He brought all that he had learned with him to the Cavaliers in 2005 when he was hired to build a foundation around rising star LeBron James that would allow the team to contend.

Without a blueprint of how to use a generational superstar like James, without previous head-coaching experience, Brown was incredibly successful in his task. He not only led the Cavs to the playoffs in his first season, but they would win at least one series each of the next five seasons.

The Cavs reached the NBA Finals for the first time ever in 2007 on the back of some truly incredible performances from LeBron. Brown built one of the league’s best defenses around him, and the offense allowed James to cook. As great as the run to the Finals was, even more impressive was how Brown then built the team up into the best in the league record-wise. He set a franchise record, yet to be broken, with 66 wins in 2008-09.

After a disappointing playoff exit in 2010, team owner Dan Gilbert fired Brown in a last-ditch attempt to lure LeBron to stay in Cleveland. That didn’t work, as James took his talents to South Beach. A few years later Gilbert recognized he had made a “mistake” firing Brown, and brought him back for one season as the coach in 2013-14, Brown’s only losing record with the team. He was fired after that year, just a couple of months before James returned home to Cleveland.

Ty Lue led the team to its only title. Mike Brown and David Blatt both saw the team reach the NBA Finals. Bill Fitch got things started, while Lenny Wilkens and Mike Fratello oversaw the golden era of Cavaliers basketball in the 1990s. They balance the ledger for a number of difficult seasons and the coaches who oversaw them. 23 coaches, 52 seasons, and a whole lot of wins and losses.