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Dennis Manoloff ‏@dmansworld474 24s24 seconds ago
Loose translation of Griffin presser: The players like Lue and didn't like Blatt. Period. #Cavs

Dennis Manoloff ‏@dmansworld474 now
Another loose translation of Griffin presser: Players, you got your wish. Stop whining and earn your money. Play like a team. Period. #Cavs

Wow, Griff laying down the law.

I listened to Windhorst on ESPN radio, he basically said that things really got full blown during the first meeting with Golden State. Blatt sat a couple of the veterans like Mo and RJ and it didn't sit well with a few. So the next game against Portland they completely mailed it in. That story would match with what Jason Lloyd said about wanting to write a story about team chemistry after the Portland game. It also makes you wonder if they were too busy pouting during the last GS game too.

According to a lot of what I'm reading ... almost from the beginning, the players would just flat tune out Blatt and showed respect to Lue. It seems like this might of been nipped in the bud a lot earlier, but I guess it's kind of hard to do when your coach is winning games at the rate he was.

I guess i'm mostly disappointed in the players for pouting and mailing-in games, but like Griff said, they got what they wanted now. There's no excuses. I'm hoping this solidifies the team chemistry and this becomes the "Smith/Shump/Mosgov" turning point like from last season.

Sam Amico ‏@AmicoHoops 23s24 seconds ago
I believe David Griffin when he says he didn't consult LeBron. He didn't need to. Cavs' lack of spirit - even after wins - pretty evident.

j/c:

Stupid move for a stupid city.

It figures that as soon as I was getting excited about our ball movement and lack of ISO play that LeBron fired Blatt the next day.

Screw the Cavs.

Go Spurs!

David Blatt fired as Cavaliers coach, replaced by Tyronn Lue - Cleveland Cavaliers - Ohio
http://www.ohio.com/blogs/cleveland-cava...nn-lue-1.656654

INDEPENDENCE: Cavs general manager David Griffin saw a team that thrived more off adversity than success. He didn’t like the tone of the locker room and didn’t think the Cavs were reaching expectations.

As a result, coach David Blatt was fired Friday despite the Cavs’ 30-11 mark and top spot in the Eastern Conference. He was replaced by Tyronn Lue.

“Sometimes you can win games in the regular season and get worse,” Griffin said. “We were regressing over a period of time.”

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.

The Cavs advanced to the NBA Finals during Blatt’s lone full season in charge and leaves Cleveland with a regular season record of 83-40.

“I’m in our locker room a lot. There’s just a disconnect there right now,” Griffin said. “Halfway through the season I think we have the time to right the ship and I know that’s crazy with a 30-11 record. We were 30-11 with a schedule reasonably easy and I’m judging a lot more than wins and losses.”

Lue was promoted from associate head coach to the head job Friday and Griffin stressed he is not considered the interim. He is the head coach and is expected to be in Cleveland next season and beyond.

Lue has a tremendous reputation across the league and was brought on to help facilitate Blatt’s acclimation from Europe to the NBA. He was already the highest paid assistant coach in the league, perhaps in the history of the NBA. Now his contract restructuring isn’t complete, one source said.

Blatt is the third coach the Cavs have fired in the last four seasons.

If Lue can survive AI literally tearing his heart out of his chest, then stepping over Lue's corpse than Blatt can bounce back too. I wish him well.

Cavs firing of David Blatt surprising only for the timing -- Bud Shaw's Sports Spin | cleveland.com
http://www.cleveland.com/budshaw/index.ssf/2016/01/cleveland_cavaliers_49.html

CLEVELAND, Ohio – David Griffin swears he didn't consult LeBron James before changing coaches.

That's believable.

Really. It is.

No need to ask. Not when James' body language has told the story for most of two seasons.

James never bought in to David Blatt, for good reason in some cases.

But James above anyone else dictated the terms of engagement with the head coach. Even more so since he'd spent a year and a half recruiting the players he wanted.

So when Griffin says James "doesn't run this organization," yes and no. Let's agree on one thing: Blatt doesn't get fired if James supports him, listens to him, lobbies for him as head coach.

The only surprising aspect of Blatt's firing is his glowing win percentage.

He went 83-40, 30-11 this season.

That's it. Nothing else.

The NBA is a shark tank for a coach, let alone for a coach who didn't make his reputation in the league.

Cavs' players – not just LeBron James – have been circling Blatt for a year and a half.

The only surprise is Blatt wasn't let go last season when James was pretty much usurping what little authority Blatt exercised.

Remember Griffin's lecture last January and his defense of James? Laughable even then.

"This narrative of our coaching situation is truly ridiculous," Griffin said of conjecture Blatt wasn't long for the job.

"It is a non-story. It's a non-narrative. Coach Blatt is our coach. He's going to remain our coach. Do not write that as a vote of confidence. He never needed one.

"It was never a question. So don't write it that way. I heard the entire audio file of LeBron James' comments. No more than three different times he said, 'We're growing together every day, the team grows together every day and I'm happy with who we have at the helm.'

"But that wasn't a sexy pool quote, so we kept looking for something else until we could pool something that sounded negative. That narrative is done. No change is being made, period."

That was then.

Now Griffin says that while he saw a galvanized team in last year's NBA Finals this year -- presto -- he didn't see the a "connectedness" during good times.

Translation: Griffin really didn't see it last year either. But no way Dan Gilbert would've okayed firing Blatt so soon after a run to within two wins of a NBA title.

Griffin was saying what he thought Gilbert wanted to hear last January. It took him a while to convince the owner yet another coaching change had to be made.

Reporters close to the team say Blatt's firing can't be traced only to LeBron's unhappiness with his coach or the fact Tyronn Lue – who has the title of New Cavs Head Coach For Now – was a LeBron favorite.

That it goes deeper than that.

Blatt didn't exactly have a lot of fans in the locker room. The telling catchphrase Griffin repeated Friday: "delineation of roles."

So now it's LeBron's team on loan to Lue.

It's so important for the Cavs to look like they've thought this through, really through. So Lue will soon sign a long term deal. He's not interim.

James long ago made it known Lue was his preference.

The question is whether the Cavs are closer to winning a title than they were last year when – without Kevin Love and Kyrie Irving – Blatt and the Cavs lost in six games to Golden State.

Here's the takeaway.

The Cavs hired Blatt before James decided to return.

Now Lue is in charge as a first-time head coach with the full backing of James and, no doubt, other players.

"I'm not leaving an unprecedented team payroll to chance," Griffin said at one point.

Or the unprecedented return of James to a city scorned.

I now have no respect for anyone on the roster.

Yeah, when you're hearing stories that the Cavs never respected their coach, would defer to the assistant from pretty much the beginning, and openly pouted during games when they didn't get their way ... it does makes it really difficult to want to root for them.

I don't care what misinformation the Cavs give to the reporters, I think this was LeBron vs Blatt.

Blatt finally had the balls to stand up to LBJ and say we are going to run a motion offense tonight. They did and they were great.

I think LeBron says..........you don't like ISO and you want motion........go run your motion somewhere else.

Screw LeBron!

Actually, from Blatt's own sources, someone said that Blatt told friends back in Isreal, "It's either going to be me or Love" ... which leads me to believe that Love had more of a beef with Blatt than Lebron did. From all I'm reading too, it sounds like none of the guys in the locker-room really respected him though. Yes, it's petty and childish of all of them, but I don't know that it's ALL Lebron.

I don't think the Cavs are a mentally tough team at all. The pressure that Blatt was putting on them was just too much. Watching Kevin Love between plays has been both a great source of laughter, and extremely frustrating. He'll screw up and immediately look at the ground -- especially if LeBron is yelling at him. This just isn't the team that Blatt needs, but I think he's a good coach and proved it here. Even if it was brief.

It has also been reported that Blatt never really reached out to any of the players, and you know as well as I do that you have to get your star players on your side if you're going to win in the NBA. That disconnect was probably the widest, from what has been reported, between Blatt and Love. It was reported that Cavs players, when told that Griffin wanted to talk to them, thought that Love was being traded, because he and Blatt were not even in the same chapter, let alone page.

I think that Blatt had an incredibly difficult job. He was hired to coach and develop a young team, and he wound up coaching a veteran team with 3 superstars instead. I don't think that he knew how difficult it would be to handle those egos, and how much work it would take to keep them all on board with what he wanted to do.

I think that this was a failing of both the coach and the players, and like they always say in situations like this .... you can't fire all of the players, so Blatt had to go.

I wonder what nasty things Blatt was saying to Kevin. Maybe it was, "Please, for the love of God, guard someone." or "You know you could be one of the best 4's ever if you gained some weight."

So there you have it. Love is the coach killer, not Lebron.

At any rate ... the Cavs play the Bulls on Saturday and the Spurs in a week. I think we'll see right away if this was a move that was needed or if it just a way for Lebron to pull a power play and go into Hero-mode more often.

Lue was evidently pulling a lot of strings and calling out players during meetings all season long. The team likely won't have a large learning curve with Lue. They'll either look rejuvenated or they'll immediately show all the bad habits of before.

It will be interesting to see what happens on the court now, especially against the Spurs.

I guess none of our Cleveland sports teams want to win.

I'm not buying it.

I freaking can't stand LBJ anymore.

What aren't you buying? From most sources, it sounds like the biggest disconnect was between Love and Blatt. The coach himself was even quoted in saying as much.

And most other sources have said it was roster-wide disconnect.

yeah i think the way blatt handled the rotations really is what did him in, guys like Rj and Mo should not be seeing less time than James jones and dellevedova, . Blatt just was in a bad situation for on the job learning. He had to grasp NBA ball alot faster. Like I said if the beef was between blatt and love, its more that love realized blatt was clueless. I saw a funny tweet today said:

Love tried to defend Blatt on the firing, but the news came in the form of a pick and roll...lol

You can buy it. I have no problem w/that.

I ain't buying it. Someone feeds information to those "sources."

The timing of how we switched from ISO ball to moving the ball is just too much.

Go cavs!!!

DAVID BLATT: [opens envelope to reveal letter reading "YOU'RE FIRED" in 72-point font comic sans] come on

That really makes no sense. Lebron is a smart player and wants to win. I can't see him playing ISO Ball and getting destroyed, then begrudginly playing "Blatt's Way" and winning by 25, as a reason to get pissed off and demand he get fired.

At any rate, we'll see in a week here. If they play inspired ball against Chicago and the Spurs, then there's a little more to it than you think.

If they pound nails in both games, then they are monumentally stupid.

yeah probably just like that

These comments from Brenden Haywood were interesting:




Interesting, because it was the exact same thing said about Mike Brown after he got fired.

I dont think a coach being afraid of him is LeBrons fault.

I heard Heywood's phone interview on ESPN2. If what he says is true, they should have replaced Blatt in the off season. Sounds like he was in over his head with this team.

http://www.cleveland.com/cavs/index.ssf/2016/01/why_david_blatt_got_fired_and.html

Somebody on the players' side is obviously feeding this guy info.

Depends on if Lebron did anything to make him afraid of calling him out. I don't know.

This was also a good read: http://www.cleveland.com/cavs/index.ssf/2016/01/why_david_blatt_got_fired_and.html

I honestly think both Blatt and the players share at least a little bit of the blame. Blatt didn't put his foot down early enough, he never established rapport with his players, and he never treated players equally. The players themselves also sulked, pouted and acted like high-schoolers. Maybe they never gave Blatt a chance in the first place, or maybe Blatt didn't give them enough reason to? At any rate, it seemed like we were good enough to keep winning, so a change was never made.

This could work out best for both parties. The Cavs get the coach that the players seem to relate better to and who demands their accountability. Blatt gets to go to a young new team where he can establish his presence from the get-go, and mold them into the team he envisions. He could be great in a place like Minnesota.

Yeah its us people in the cities fault SMDH

It's nice of Cleveland.com to allow Rich Paul to write an op-ed.

Woj wrote on the subject as well. His word is as good as gold with me.

http://sports.yahoo.com/news/how-david-b...-035612484.html

Lebron mafia or not, he has nowhere to hide now. If he can't improve with Lue then he really has no excuse.

He'll just blame Love. Seriously, reality is gonna hit Lebron like a $&@%# when he isn't good anymore.