In case you were living under a rock recently, the Cleveland Cavaliers made a coaching change by firing David Blatt and promoting Tyronn Lue. After Blatt was fired, many other NBA coaches came to his defense and said that he didn't deserve for that to happen because the team was having so much success. Since then, stories have started to trickle out about the locker room under Blatt and his relationship with players. One big story is the fact that Blatt was disliked by basically every veteran on the team, according to Brian Windhorst of ESPN.
There is no doubt that when we look back on Blatt's tenure as the Cavaliers head coach, we will see that he won a lot of games and did about as much as he could with the team. Blatt led the team to the NBA Finals in his first season in the league and then had them in first place this season before getting axed. Despite the success, things weren't always easy for Blatt and the Cavs, and there was some obvious turmoil between him and LeBron James.
James and Blatt certainly did not get along very well in the year plus they were together, but LeBron apparently was not the only one that had issues with the head coach. Windhorst said that in his 14 years covering the NBA, he had never seen a situation quite like the one in Cleveland, as he said on the True Hoop Podcast that Blatt "was unable to get even a modicum of respect from the majority of his players."
Most of the talk has been about LeBron and how he is a coach killer, and that has been semi-warranted, considering he is on his fifth coach in nine seasons with the Cavs, but he was far from the only issue here. Windhorst said that anyone that "had any sort of veteran status" did not like him. From the beginning, Blatt was in a no-win situation, and he apparently did not do enough to get his players to trust him or believe in what he wanted to do. As Windhorst said, "he wasn't able to win over about anybody."
Regardless of this report, it is hard to blame this all on Blatt, and overall, it is really tough to evaluate his time at the helm in Cleveland. This latest report could just be proof that the Cavaliers players are thick-headed and didn't want an inexperienced coach with no NBA playing experience to lead a team with playoff aspirations. It could also mean that Blatt really isn't set out to be a coach at the highest level of basketball, though. This is something we likely won't know the answer to until he gets another NBA job, if he wants one. What this report does do is take a lot of the blame off LeBron because over the past week, he has been scapegoated for Blatt's firing, but clearly he wasn't the only one that wanted it to happen.
