Rick Carlisle, Stan Van Gundy Defend David Blatt

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.

Cleveland’s Quicken Loans Arena and the Cavs’ players on Monday (Tuesday AEDT) will be decked out in green and gold, Aussie singer Cody Simpson will belt out Advance Australia Fair pre-game and the Cleveland Metroparks Zoo will have native Australian animals to show the 20,000 fans in attendance.

We wanted to push it, we wanted to open the floor and we came out and did that and then we just dropped off the map…

“I don’t think we’re in good enough shape”, Lue said.

So, today, we are elevating Tyronn Lue, from his role as Associate Head Coach to Head Coach.

Lue added to that by acknowledging before Saturday’s game that he did not believe the players were enjoying themselves this season.

It sounds like James will get to run the floor now. He had 26 points, 13 rebounds and nine assists but were 11 of 27 from the field.

Anderson scored 23 points and tied a season-high with six 3-pointers while leading hot-shooting New Orleans to a 116-99 win over the Bucks (see full recap). The offence never really recovered.

Blatt took Maccabi Tel Aviv to an improbable Euroleague championship in 2014 before becoming the first coach to leap from that league to an National Basketball Association head coaching position later in the year.

“I think I was just as surprised and caught off guard as anybody yesterday”, James, 31, told reporters ahead of the team’s game against the Chicago Bulls.

“We have to continue to pull together when things get hard and things get tough, we have to continue to pull together”. Mario Chalmers scored 19 points for the banged-up Grizzlies.

“Memphis, having Zach Randolph and Marc Gasol, they love to pound it into the post and they like to play at a slower pace- real deliberate, get the ball into the post and let guys work off of that”, James said.

“That one to me elevated all of the coach firings totally into the theater of the absurd”, Van Gundy said Saturday.

The loss capped a turbulent 24 hours in Cleveland. Although Blatt is a good head coach with an impressive career, he isn’t as valuable to the team as their franchise player.

The Cavs clearly wanted a change by boldly firing Blatt last week, and with their new man, Lue, making immediate alterations, perhaps Cleveland can find an identity to contend against the Western Conference giants come playoff time.