Leading Cavs fire David Blatt as coach in second season

David Blatt, who lead the Cleveland Cavaliers to the National Basketball Association finals last season, has been fired as head coach. Blatt was a rookie head coach in the NBA previous year but he has a rich worldwide basketball experience with oaching stints in basketball leagues in Russia, Italy, Turkey and Israel since 1993.

The Cleveland Cavaliers have hired David Blatt as their head coach…anddddd he’s gone. Griffin said whatever conversations he had with James over the state of the team occurred in the weeks and months leading up to Friday, not in response to Monday’s blowout loss to the Golden State Warriors. Blatt came with a big ego, and lacked the personal skills of someone like Steve Kerr (a respected former player who followed a popular coach and did it perfectly) to help him win over LeBron and the rest of the team.

Along with the back-to-back losses, the Bulls are also finding it hard to win recently, going 2-6 in their last eight games, causing them to fall to the fourth spot in the Eastern Conference standings with a 24-18 record. “We just kind of lost confidence in ourselves, and I think that’s the disconnect that we kind of lost confidence in ourselves when a team you’re looking to face in The Finals comes in and beats you by 40 on your home court”.

It’s a stunning development on the surface for a team in first place and challenging for a championship, but Blatt struggled connecting with his players since arriving in Cleveland last season. LeBron doesn’t run this organization. “LeBron is about this organization”. It’s not fair and frankly is not fair to me and our group anymore…

From firing the coach they didn’t like to calling them “individuals”, Griffin has seemingly shifted the pressure from the new coach of this team (Lue), and put it squarely on the shoulders of the players on his roster. He had been selected as coach of the team in June 2014 just weeks before James announced he was leaving the Miami Heat to rejoin the Cavaliers. We went through some rough times the first couple of years, and Mark could have bailed on me.

Blatt was reluctant to get on LeBron James, Kyrie Irving or Kevin Love during film sessions from the start of his tenure. He has never had a great head coach but he has had some pretty solid ones.

The general manager said Lue was taking over as head coach without an interim tag. He did a tremendous job, just from a strategic standpoint.

As social networks hummed with speculation and opinion about James’ role in Blatt’s removal, Griffin dismissed the notion that the four-time league MVP is a “coach killer”. So without knowing all the details, I can’t really say anything.

“If you look at his record, this is weird”. Fisher was asked how important it is for a coach to have a good relationship with the star player.