David Blatt is a former NBA coach

If the team did what the media said here's a list of things that would've happened by now:

We would've traded Kyrie in the first month of the season

We would've traded Lebron by the 2nd month

Would've traded Love to Boston or LA by the first week

We would've fired Blatt for Mark Jackson or George Karl

We would've traded Waiters(Actually did this)

And we probably would've tanked after Our horrible start for Okafor


So basically the media sux but is amazingly hilarious at the same time.

It would be interesting to compare the skills of Blatt and Spoelstra. Both seem to be burdened with the fact that LeBron was their key player and that success is attributed to LeBron rather than the coach. Even after Spoelstra has won 2 finals, I wonder how many would view him as a great coach.

Blatt has shown the ability in Europe at least to take a new team and mold them into a winner. He will need to probably get to the NBA finals for his coaching this year to be deemed a success, which to me is highly unfair, but the media have hyped Cleveland to be the favorite or near favorite to win the Finals, which (as much as I'd like that to be true) to me doesn't ring true.

:Yawn: we need the playoffs.

Gameday, hope Ky and Kev are playing.

Paul said:

It would be interesting to compare the skills of Blatt and Spoelstra. Both seem to be burdened with the fact that LeBron was their key player and that success is attributed to LeBron rather than the coach. Even after Spoelstra has won 2 finals, I wonder how many would view him as a great coach.

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Many, that's why the coach ranking up thread has him Top 10, and it's why I ranked him (prior to that) in my own personal Top 10.

Spolestra is widely regarded as a great coach these days, because he is.

Blatt still has to prove himself the same way Spolestra did.

If I could trade Blatt for Spo I would do it in a heartbeat and not think twice about it.

i think blatt has ridiculous potential. Up there with the very best once he gets some accomplishments on the resume. Very vey happy to have him.

I just wanted to add that in Europe, PGs call out plays most of the time. Especially experienced ones.
Like Blatt said, they have this package or bank of practiced plays and most of the time you would see a PG take the ball upcourt and call a play, rather than the coach calling them every trip down the court.

Blatt's offense ALWAYS centered around experienced and highly talented individuals, rather than what the media expects (the Princeton offense) and he ALWAYS trusted his players with making on court decisions.
He would sometimes early in the game not take timeouts when the team was out of synch and getting scored on easily to let guys work it out themselves and find their way.

Couple that with having the best player in the world, coming after two championships and you have Blatt gladly giving LBJ the ropes on O.
Really nothing sensational or controversial about it.

Like I said earlier in this thread, it seems like the success of a non-NBA coach in the NBA is hurting some people in the butthole.

The calling plays "story" (and I say that loosely) is nothing. It isn't even worthy of a discussion. Quite frankly, it is borderline insulting to anyone that has a basic understanding of basketball.

Rob said:

The calling plays "story" (and I say that loosely) is nothing. It isn't even worthy of a discussion. Quite frankly, it is borderline insulting to anyone that has a basic understanding of basketball.

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Yes, and I wish the rest of the media would have the balls to point out that Windy completely exposed his own lack of knowledge and understanding of basketball by thinking this is something unusual and trying to make a story out of it. Of course, then you would also have to call out all the stooges that went along with him and ballooned (pun intended) the story to these ridiculous proportions.

gourimoko said:

I didn't. I think for the sake of the thread we should really avoid that topic.

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Have no intention to discuss politics in a basketball forum, just said that the note that they would blame Blatt for the conflict is funny

I think Windy is just being lazy with his assessments of the team and he hasn't really adjusted or changed his thinking from the January Cavs.

Everything Windy has said about the Cavs has been true, but his line of thinking hasn't evolved with the team's evolution. What he meant by LeBron calling the plays and Blatt being a puppet is a reference back to when LeBron took over the point guard duties from Kyrie and basically ran high PnR all game to start winning. Windy continues to say the Cavs don't run Blatt's Princeton offense, that they threw it out. Again, they did throw it out in December. But if you watch any Cavs game now, they run a TON of beautiful offense that is obviously Coach Blatt's.

LeBron still lets Blatt call the out of bounds plays which almost always generate a score out of a timeout. Do I think LeBron fully trusts Blatt? Hell no. LeBron doesn't trust him as far as he can throw him right now, but he's happy with where the team is and that is all that matters. LeBron still runs the offense in 4th quarters of close games, which is essentially high PnR. I can't get mad at him for this because he wants the ball in his hands and he wants to make sure if something goes wrong it's because of him. LeBron won't start trusting Blatt until he helps LeBron win a playoff series. Once LeBron sees that, I think that's when the trust will really start to build.

Lets see what coach has to say.
Post game presser:
http://www.nba.com/cavaliers/video/teams/cavaliers/2015/04/02/150402postgamecoachmov-3562486

- Iman was really good on both sides. He's very impactful on D, keeps it simple and overall fits well into our system.

- Joe Vardon asks why with 5 minutes left Blatt wanted to take LBJ out, and Bron said "no". Blatt says that yeah, he wanted to stay for another minute. You can ask him why.
(This guy always asks non-basketball related questions. He's such an imbecile. He asked LeBron in his post game interview, and LeBron said that he just wanted a couple more minutes. That was right before LeBron's shove to Dragic btw, so that was probably the reason.)

- When someone (Love) can't play it's next man up. That's a sign of a good team. We don't want to play without Kev, he's a big part. But the guys stepped up and that's a very good sign.

- We've been posting up LeBron quite a lot. He's doing a great job in the post scoring and facilitating. That's not where we want him ALL the time, but he has a great advantage down there.

- For a fair amount of time our bench has been great. It was an issue in the beginning of the season. But with Iman, TT, Delly and JJ coming up we've really stepped it up.

- Joe Vardon asks if it was the plan tonight to post up LeBron or if he decided that what he needs to do. Blatt: "I called the plays", smiling.

- Regarding Marion - the way we're rolling, we're going with what works well. Not to take anything away from what Shawn brings to the table, but we're playing what works best for us at the moment.

- JJ played instead of Love was both because MIA tend to go small, and for purposes of spacing the floor.

Joe Vardon is such a damn drama queen.

gourimoko said:

Many, that's why the coach ranking up thread has him Top 10, and it's why I ranked him (prior to that) in my own personal Top 10.

Spolestra is widely regarded as a great coach these days, because he is.

Blatt still has to prove himself the same way Spolestra did.

If I could trade Blatt for Spo I would do it in a heartbeat and not think twice about it.

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Well Spo right now is pretty much failing with the Heat even thought they still have more than enough talent to have a playoff spot secured by now... I was sure Miami would be sixth at this point with no worries. The fact that they are still fighting for playoff spot is a total failure.

I respect Spo. What he did in Miami with all the stars in that team is great, but I wouldnt rush into sating "I'll trade Blatt for Spo in a heartbit", that's not because I'm a Blatt maniac, thats just because Blatt is doing great and I don't get this statements at this great time for the team

MaccabiCavs said:

Well Spo right now is pretty much failing with the Heat even thought they still have more than enough talent to have a playoff spot secured by now...

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I wouldn't trade either coaches either, but I think this is too harsh on Spoelstra. The lose of Bosh just killed them, because they have a lot of complementary guys but nobody (except the rarely-seen healthy Wade) who is a true difference maker. And, I'd give Spo at least a little credit for signing Whiteside, and more for how he's played.