A Look At David Blatt

The above clip is the first interview I ever saw with Cavaliers coach David Blatt. Blatt had just coached Maccabi Tel Aviv to the 2014 Euroleague Championship, despite allegedly having a far less talented team than his opposition. It was around this time that the media began to speculate that Blatt would finally make his move to join the coaching ranks of the NBA after years of tremendous success overseas. With the Cavaliers and the Golden State Warriors vying for his services as a head or assistant coach, respectively, I was curious to see what I could tell about Blatt in this interview after one of the biggest victories of his career.

What I saw blew me away. Blatt had a confidence about him that, even through video, grabbed my attention and likely had the same effect on the media in the room. Great leaders have a commanding presence. Whether it’s a great coach, CEO, or the President of the United States, these men can captivate a room and hold the attention of everyone in it. Blatt seemed to have those qualities.

Let’s go back to the summer of 2014. The Cavaliers were looking for a coach after a disappointing season that saw them go 33-49, missing the playoffs for the fourth year in a row. Former general manager Chris Grant and coach Mike Brown had been let go. Rumors of dissension in the locker room and lack of professionalism among the players were rampant. As a fan, I wanted the Cavaliers to hire someone with head coaching experience to help set a standard for the team’s culture. At the same time, I had no interest in another retread from the NBA’s coaching carousel. In Blatt, the Cavaliers had a chance for something new, different, and dynamic.

Of course it wasn’t all smooth sailing after that. Blatt was hired to coach a young team with talented prospects like Kyrie Irving, Andrew Wiggins, Dion Waiters, and Tristan Thompson, but on July 11, three weeks to the day after Blatt was hired, everything changed. LeBron James announced that he was returning to the Cavaliers after four seasons with the Miami Heat, and the team Blatt thought he was going to have was gone before he ever really had it. Tyler Zeller was sent to the Boston Celtics, while Jarrett Jack and Sergey Karasev was shipped off to the Brooklyn Nets to help create the salary cap room needed to sign James. Andrew Wiggins and Anthony Bennett were famously traded to the Minnesota Timberwolves for Kevin Love. Dwight Powell was sent to the Celtics to help create a trade exception. The young team Blatt had though he would be coaching was replaced by a veteran squad with the likes of James, Love, Mike Miller, Shawn Marion, and James Jones on the roster.

Blatt was the recipient of a lot of criticism at the beginning of the season, some of it deserved, some not. There’s no doubt that the Cavaliers struggled tremendously in the first half of last season, and Blatt wasn’t blameless in that. He failed to reach several players, most importantly James, early on.  His abrasive attitude with the media didn’t help things either, as he was given no quarter in the press and players felt it brought negative attention towards the team that could have been avoided. He also had to deal with speculation that associate head coach Tyronn Lue was calling the timeouts and running the team in the eyes of the players. Although Blatt and Lue have always seemed to be on the same page, the fact that the Cavaliers hired the man Blatt beat out for the job to be his lead assistant was bound to generate some level of controversy in the media.

While there’s no doubt that Blatt should have handled the “rookie coach” questions better, it’s easy to realize why this upset him. Here was this man, one of the most decorated in the world at his chosen profession, and he was being treated as though non of those prior accomplishments mattered. Imagine being incredibly successful in your chosen profession, and when you move to a larger company, all of you previously accomplishments are either ignored or mocked. This is what happened to David Blatt in his first year as coach of the Cleveland Cavaliers.

The truth though is that the media was correct, as least to an extent. What Blatt had done previously didn’t matter. He had become the head coach of a team that subsequently acquired the services of the best player in the world, and was now attempting to bring a rabid sports town it’s first championship in 51 years. The Cavaliers were going to be under the microscope as soon as James returned to Cleveland, and the ability of the coach to guide this team to success was going to be questioned no matter who that coach was, let along a newcomer to the league with a bit of a chip on his shoulder.

Despite all of this, Blatt continued to do what he had done his entire coaching career, he survived and persevered. After David Griffin traded for Timofey Mozgov, J.R. Smith, and Iman Shumpert, the Cavaliers had the perimeter defense and rim protection they needed for the team to become a true contender. The team went 34-9 after those trades and Blatt seemed to find common ground with his players (LeBron). Things seemed to be coming together for the Cavaliers, and they looked as strong as any team in the NBA.

And then came the playoffs, which can be looked at as the time when Blatt began to come into his own as an NBA coach. In each round of the Eastern Conference playoffs, Blatt went up against a supposedly superior coach, and in each round of the playoffs he outcoached his counterpart. Brad Stevens, the media darling, had his Boston Celtics using streetball tactics to try to upend the Cavaliers. They were swept. While Blatt was criticized by some for not doing the same, the better team never uses these tactics as all they do is keep the game close, and the Cavaliers simply didn’t need them. Tom Thibodeau, the defensive genius, couldn’t find a way to stop they Cavaliers, and the Bulls lost in six games to a Cavs team that had a hobbled Kyrie Irving and was without Kevin Love. Obviously detractors will point to the timeout gaffe of game four, and there’s simply no excuse for that kind of mistake, but overall, there’s no doubt that Blatt was able to put his players in a favorable position against the Bulls each game.

Things just got better in the Eastern Conference Finals against the Atlanta Hawks. Mike Budenholzer had just won Coach of the Year, and the Hawks, while banged up, where undoubtedly healthier than the Cavaliers. Despite Kyrie Irving playing just the first and last games of the series, the Cavaliers swept the number one seed in the Eastern Conference, continuing a metamorphosis that continued against the Golden State Warriors in the NBA Finals. LeBron James gets much of the credit for the Cavaliers making it as far as they did despite the injuries they dealt with, and rightfully so, but no one player can change the way a team plays on his own. Blatt—known during his time in Europe for his ability to adjust his coaching style to the strengths of his players—and the rest of the coaching staff deserve a ton of credit for being able to successfully adjust the schemes and rotations on the fly as the team dealt with injuries. In a league where many coaches have a scheme and philosophy they stick with, come hell or high water, this stands out as special.

Blatt’s coaching acumen continues to shine through this season. The Cavaliers are 11-3 despite the fact that their starting backcourt of Kyrie Irving and Iman Shumpert haven’t played a minute this season, and Mo Williams, J.R. Smith, and Timofey Mozgov have all missed time with injuries. The players seem to have bought into Blatt’s coaching more this season as well, with James supporting the logic of Blatt’s decision to intentionally foul Andre Drummond while the Cavaliers were leading during last Tuesday’s game a great example of this. It’s no stretch to think that James would have shredded Blatt with passive-aggressive comments to the media for the same decision a year ago.  His support of Blatt hit a new high earlier this week, when he said that Blatt “does his job as great as any coach can do in this league“. LeBron has never been known for strong endorsements of his coaches, and this kind of public buy-in on his part is incredibly rare. In the NBA, when a coach and his best player are on the same page, great things usually happen. LeBron is smart enough to realize this, but Blatt still had to earn his respect for it to happen.

In life, there are often times when things don’t go as you’d expect, but still work out for the best. The hiring of David Blatt to coach a team headlined by LeBron James, Kevin Love, and Kyrie Irving was possibly the most unlikely scenario for the Cleveland Cavaliers 17 months ago, but it was the scenario that occurred. With the Cavaliers off to an 11-3 start after just their second visit to the NBA Finals, this unlikely outcome could also be a pretty special one.