David Blatt, celebrated Israeli basketball coach, fired by Cleveland Cavaliers

Jan 23, 2016; Cleveland, OH, USA; Cleveland Cavaliers head coach Tyronn Lue (C) huddles with his tea …

The Cavaliers lost to the Golden State Warriors in the Finals, 4 games to 2, and entered this season with high expectations – particularly with franchise cornerstone and OH native LeBron James aiming to end the city of Cleveland’s 51-year championship drought in the major American professional sports leagues.

“It’ll be some adjustment period, but I don’t think it’ll be that long”, James said. “It’s unfortunate what happened yesterday, and as a team we just have to focus on what’s now, what’s now in front of us with the coach that we have now and we’ve got to continue to get better”.

“For me, I can’t get caught up and anxious about what other people are thinking”, James said.

While Lue met the media for the first time Saturday morning as coach of the Cavaliers, James stood in the middle of Cleveland Clinic Courts chatting with general manager David Griffin. There’s no denying the four-time MVP has major influence within Cleveland’s organization, but Griffin was adamant that James was not consulted before the decision was made.

The Cleveland Cavaliers fired David Blatt on Friday, immediately replacing him with assistant coach Tyronn Lue.

“It’s the only reason I’m (back) is to make Pop spend his All-Star break at the game instead of on some beach with a mai tai in his hand”, Kerr quipped.

Yet LeBron has only twice played on teams with a penchant for fast play.

James heads into this game leading the Cavaliers in scoring, rebounds and shooting percentage this season.

At the same time, I completely get why Blatt was sacked. The NBA is a players’ league, and if you don’t have the confidence of the players as a coach, you can have all the X’s and O’s you want, you aren’t going to be successful. “Like it or love it or hate it, we got to respect it”. He’s played with Phil Jackson and his coached with Doc (Rivers). “We all put in hard work and we’ve all helped coach Blatt in every way we could and he was our leader”. Needless to say, when Dan Gilbert hired him on June 20, 2014, Israelis had great affection for Blatt and the Cavs.

On Game 1 of post-Blatt, the Cleveland fans were addressed first, as Lue ensured that the introductions be continued.

So now it’s Lue’s chance to bring a team together that, despite their success, hasn’t been able to gel as much as they’d like this far into their Big-Three experiment of LeBron James, Kyrie Irving and Kevin Love.