The Case for Kibitz

https://soundcloud.com/ctb-5/podcast82-davidfiresdavid

Editor’s Note: The dismissal of David Blatt struck the sports world like a 8.0 on the Richter scale, and the reverberations and aftershocks will be felt on Cavs:TheBlog in the coming days. Above you will find an emergency Cavs:ThePod with instant reactions from Nate Smith, Tom Pestak, and Cory Hughey on the situation. Below is an article on Blatt that Cory named months ago, and is surprisingly fitting with yesterday’s news.  

When news broke in June of 2014 that David Blatt was in the running for the Cavs head coaching job, maniacal fans went to Google and Youtube to break down what Blatt could bring to the table. The more I read, the more I liked him as a possibility, not just because of what he had accomplished in his diverse coaching career, but also, because of what he wasn’t. Blatt wasn’t another retread coach with numerous NBA playoff failures on his resume. He wasn’t a member of the old boys club that permeates American sports where executives play their own brand of buddy ball securing their pals gigs. He achieved success everywhere he had been, and didn’t pigeonhole himself to any specific scheme to feed his own narcissism. He got players to overachieve as a whole and play better as a unit than the sum of their individual parts led you to expect. There are multiple faces to David Blatt, and I don’t think we ever got a chance to witness his genuine self, where he could coach the team in his own vision.

Before the 2014-15 campaign, we ran a 5 on 5 previewing our expectations for the seminal season in which the Cavs were to transform from a rebuild with no exit strategy to a team with “Championship or Bust” on the letterhead. Nate, Tom, David, Ben, and I eagerly anticipated a free flowing offense with a ballet of off-ball movement that would make the Cavs appear to be a cross blend of the Spurs’ pulverizing-perfection offense with a talent level the Heat had showcased in the previous two NBA Finals. We expected both Love and LeBron to take turns operating out of the post and perimeter, and to run pick-your-poison pick and pops with weak side wings flaring into shooting position for uncontested threes in the holes that the stars opened for them. The possibilities of what LeBron, Love, and Kyrie could achieve in Blatt’s offense with their passing ability and three point range seemed limitless at the time.

That summer of 2014 provided an ever-flowing dopamine drip along the lines of a Schedule I Drug, and we were so high on our own imaginations that we couldn’t see the potential for abuse until months later. Anderson Varejao was given a contract extension that almost immediately looked terrible with his rough fit with Love in the front court. Dion and Kyrie were still playing a childish game of “it’s mine” with the ball. The worst part was that bad LeBron surfaced so soon after the honeymoon. He hijacked the offense like he hijacked the summer and largely ignored Blatt. Words are a funny thing. We revere them as a milestone on our own evolutionary progress as a species, and we pick them apart to find their perfect employment. In reality, they are simply our failed attempt at conveying emotion. You can throw #Ipromise at the end of a tweet, and even drop a line in a blockbuster film about how you see Cleveland’s face in the clouds, but if your actions don’t match the words, it’s all  just foreplay, and you were really just looking up to see your own reflection in the pillows of precipitation.

As a self-admitted Blatt guy, and sometimes apologist, I genuinely felt sad at the news of his dismissal. Those visions of a future that I believed would come true hit me like a relationship that had come to an end. All of the promise and time I invested into what it could have been was really just fleeting moments of my youth that I wasted. I could have learned Spanish, or how to play the piano instead, but instead I day dreamed about a basketball team. The future that played out in my brain so many times was rewritten in a instant.

So why was Blatt fired, and why didn’t his tenure with the Cavs work? A few hours after General Manager David Griffin’s press conference, Adrian Wojnarowski provided the blood stained glove that snugly fits LeBron James’ massive hand, which has controlled the puppet strings to the Cavaliers franchise since the moment Dan Gilbert’s private jet touched down in Dade County on July 6th of 2014. Woj begins that Blatt never had a chance from the rip. That LeBron’s dismissive attitude towards Blatt had trickled down and spread to the rest of the roster. While Tyronn Lue wasn’t Klutch Sports first choice to be the hand of the king, he was a compromise they would get.

As much as LeBron vows his reverence for Tim Duncan, and his fascination with the Warriors, it means nothing with his personal dismissal of David Blatt from day one. Blatt was the perfect coach to turn the Cavs into a monster, and LeBron made a conscious decision to put himself ahead of the team, or any of the PR lip service he has spewed since returning. The fear I have for the franchise going forward are thus. The reasons Duncan is Duncan and the Warriors are so feared is because they’ve bought in completely, checked their egos at the door, and sacrificed entirely for the good of the tribe, and that LeBron James’ fatal flaw is that he’s incapable of that.

Which brings us to that funny yiddish word in the title. Like most words, kibitz has a different meaning to different people. To some, it’s jovial joking around that can boarder on being intrusive. To me it’s a gathering of people to share a piece of themselves informally, once they’ve let their guard down, and it allows them to experience the world together. That’s what I felt while I shared my life with my collection of misfit toys at The Kibitz Room. We all knew that we had been broken by society, but we fit in here, in this moment with one another because we understood one another’s journey, and because we had lived it in our own way. We survived a loop reel of rejection, and while we didn’t necessarily prosper, we grew personally from it together. We kibitzed and understood one another on a level that I’ve never experienced elsewhere, and probably never will again.

This article was conceived three months ago, and was going to tie in Blatt’s roots, his Jewish faith, some of my experiences at the Kibitz, and the seemingly growing camaraderie that seemed to be taking root on the Cavs bench. The players appeared to be the tallest group of cheerleaders on the planet as they’d root on zoo crew members during blow outs. In the end, Blatt was fired for a lack of kibitzing in the locker room. Was Blatt the root of that lack of fellowship, or did LeBron poison the well against Blatt?

Blatt’s firing certainly changes the narrative on the Cavs quest to end Cleveland’s half-century and counting title drought. If they don’t win a title during this incarnation of the team, his firing will be one of the primary plot fulcrums we’ll dissect on Cavs:TheBlog, along with Andy’s extension, the Wiggins’ trade, whatever goes wrong from April-June, and the Cleveland failure package will get a fresh cut.

The fact Tyronn Lue was already in house for this entire run is encouraging to me that this won’t be a Trainwreck in the coming months. The team knows him and vice versa. When Avery Johnson was fired by the Mavericks, his .735 winning percentage was the highest in NBA history at the time, and it was the right move. I looking forward to seeing Blatt on a team that is open to his leadership, and watching him succeed from afar because I believe in him. Hopefully for our sake as Cavs fans, Lue is the right man for this team, and this transition won’t be looked upon as yet another failure.

There’s a part of me that feels good for Blatt as a person, and that his termination in a way was merciful. There has to be some sense of liberation for him in all of this. He’s no longer the media monster’s punching bag and scapegoat. He doesn’t have to suppress himself and his talents to appease an ego fit for a king. He didn’t sign up for the media circus that fluffs LeBron around the clock as click bait spam for idiots. I get depressed when I don’t see my dog for two days. Blatt’s family has been 6,000 miles away the entire time, in the matchbox in a bag of dynamite that is Israel. Blatt was deflecting charged barbs that questioned his credentials to lead an NBA team. I’m happy he takes that flush retirement plan that only a former Cleveland coach can attain, which will provide for his family for generation.  He’s earned the right to spend some time kibitzing with his own tribe.