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Tyronn Lue was taken aback by David Blatt's '[messed]-up' firing
Former Cleveland Cavaliers coach David Blatt apparently had a strong ally in the man who eventually replaced him.
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Current Cleveland coach Tyronn Lue reportedly went to bat for Blatt once Lue was informed by Cavs general manager David Griffin that the team was going to fire the head coach after a 30-11 start to the 2015-16 regular season.
Lue, who finished his regular season with a 27-14 run (with LeBron James missing five of those contests, compared to just one sit-out with Blatt) and a trip to the NBA Finals, was not unlike the rest of the league in its disbelief that the Cavaliers would dismiss the former Maccabi Tel Aviv coach just a season and a half into his NBA career.
Chris Haynes at Cleveland.com recounts Lue’s initial reaction when Griffin told him of his decision to let Blatt go:
"This is f----- up, Griff."
That didn't prevent Griffin from calmly asking Lue if he could take over. Hired as the associate head coach a year and a half earlier, becoming the head of a franchise was Lue's eventual goal. But this didn't seem right.
Lue pleaded with Griffin, arguing for several minutes that firing Blatt was an excessive move for a team carrying a conference-best 30-11 record. Griffin listened to Lue's pleas. When they ended, he told Lue the decision has already been carried out.
Griffin circled back to his original question.
"What's done is done. I'm asking you if you can lead this team?" It had taken a few minutes, but Griffin got the response he sought.
"Yeah, I can f---ing lead this team."
(Yet another reminder that Tyronn Lue spent his formative NBA years hanging around notorious potty-mouth Kobe Bryant.)
The firing of David Blatt was never an either/or move to take a side on. That was the case the day of his firing, it’s the case today as the Cavaliers gear up for a return to the NBA Finals, and it would still be the case had the Atlanta Hawks or Toronto Raptors upset the Cavs in the Eastern Conference bracket.
David Blatt’s firing, to paraphrase Lue, truly was messed up. He was coming off of a Finals appearance in his NBA rookie year – a competitive Finals appearance pitched without Kyrie Irving or Kevin Love – and he was on pace to hit 60 wins with his Cavs. There just isn’t a whole lot of precedence for firings like this to take place, unless something truly over the top happened.
Nothing ever did, but that’s not how LeBron James works. There was just an obvious and uneasy sense of antipathy, even if it wasn’t exactly overt or on record, at play both on and off the court. Griffin, to his credit, did something about that.
Griffin is also lucky in the sense that he has James to fall back on, he had one of the NBA’s top assistants and sought-after head coaching interviewees in Tyronn Lue to take a “chance” on, and a veritable blank check from the team’s ownership group to dive into the luxury tax with. That doesn’t take away from his accomplishments, or the fact that it would be his name in the crosshairs (and not Lue or LeBron’s) should the coaching switch have fallen flat, but David Griffin was working from a nice starting point that wasn’t all his creation.
David Blatt will move on, of course, even after failing to secure a gig coaching the New York Knicks. One report has him heading to Turkey to resume his coaching career. From Lefteris Moutis at Eurohoops:
According to various sources from Turkey and Israel, David Blatt will be the new coach of Turkish team Darussafaka Dogus, a club has already received a wild card in order to participate in next season’s Euroleague for a second consecutive year.
[…]
With fewer and fewer options remaining on the other side of the Atlantic, David Blatt seems willing return to Euroleague, the competition which he won in 2014 with Maccabi Tel Aviv. Darussafaka Dogus will definitely provide a great working environment for Blatt, since it is an ambitious team with a budget that is expected to satisfy every wish of its new coach.
While in Cleveland Blatt chafed at being referred to as a “rookie” coach, pointing to his significant overseas experience and choosing a rather silly hill to battle for. He had an odd relationship with his best player, and he failed to turn Cleveland into the offensive powerhouse that it should have been save for a few stretches late in the 2014-15 regular season. None of these were fireable offenses, but with stakes this great sometimes teams are forced into some rather messed up moves.
To put it nicely.
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Kelly Dwyer is an editor for Ball Don't Lie on Yahoo Sports. Have a tip? Email him at KDonhoops@yahoo.com or follow him on Twitter! Follow @KDonhoops
