David Blatt is a former NBA coach

[Jscc]

I don't think they'll win a series against a team that gets physical with them and slows the game down.

Their fanbase seems terrified of a first round matchup with Oklahoma City.

 

[Ophir]

Their fanbase seems terrified of a first round matchup with Oklahoma City.

Don't be too surprised to see some Maccabi fans backing our legendary coach if the Cavs reach the finals...
View: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=-srQKPS6rQg

 

[MikeOC33]

The Warriors have a really good home court crowd too.

Still, I don't think they come out of the West. I saw a team last night that is a little weak mentally. I don't think they'll win a series against a team that gets physical with them and slows the game down.

Obviously San Antonio comes to mind with your description... mentally strong and will slow things down... but I'm not sure SA in particular can slow 'em down enough.... and right now, SA is only 2 games out of being GS first round match up.

BTW, so far GS is 1-1 vs SA, and 3-1 vs Okc. GS plays SA one more time yet.

 

[Gus Zing]

Blatt has done a great job managing LeBron's mins.

Just curious. If Kyrie wasnt hurt would it have been a good time to rest LeBron tonight?

 

[Gus Zing]

If we play the Warriors in the Finals I hope we get Love the ball in the post more. They have no one that can guard him. I truly feel he could average 21/10 vs. them.

 

[e0y2e3]

If we play the Warriors in the Finals I hope we get Love the ball in the post more. They have no one that can guard him. I truly feel he could average 21/10 vs. them.

Huh?

Draymond Green 100% can guard Love and poked away about four attempts to get him the ball in the post because he's so good at ball denial.

Draymond is probably the best defensive match-up for Love in the league.

 

[InBoobieWeTrust]

Huh?

Draymond Green 100% can guard Love and poked away about four attempts to get him the ball in the post because he's so good at ball denial.

Draymond is probably the best defensive match-up for Love in the league.

Green is good at ball denial, and he was also allowed to play overly physical without getting penalized. When Love did actually get the ball on the block though, he was able to easily score on Dray.

 

[oracio]

Jim Ingraham: Cleveland Cavaliers, Coach David Blatt hitting their stride

By Jim Ingraham, The Morning Journal & The News-Herald

Posted: 02/27/15, 1:13 AM EST |

Jeff Forman/JForman@News-Herald.com Cleveland head coach David Blatt discusses a call with Jon Goble in the first half of the Cavaliers' 110-99 win Feb. 26 at Quicken Loans Arena.

This is not just weathering the storm. This is making an obscene gesture toward the storm.

Hey storm, weather this!

It didn’t happen overnight, and it didn’t happen in a week or a month.

It took quite a while. It took loads of patience, confidence and self-control. It took two trades, some extended downtime for the franchise player, a six-game losing streak, a nine-game 1-8 retreat, a 12-game winning streak leading to a two-month, 18-2 rampage, and a total emotional, tactical and strategic mid-season roster reboot, but the returns are finally in.

Cavs Coach David Blatt fought the storm, and the storm lost.

Blatt 1, Storm zero.

As it turns out he can coach. He does have a rotation. His team will respond to and play for him.

It took almost until March, but all those October, November and December questions, doubts and fears about the Cavs’ new coach have been answered, resolved and assuaged.

In his maiden voyage through the NBA, Blatt has proven he can coach, not just any team, but a team with skyrocketing expectations.

The team Blatt led to a 110-99 victory over the Golden State Warriors in a potential NBA Finals preview Feb. 26 at The Q in no way resembled the team that on Nov. 5 was 1-3, on Nov. 22 was 5-7, or on Jan. 13 was 19-20.

Blatt’s team now in no way resembles the team that appeared so discombobulated, with a coach who seemed so in over his head that General Manager David Griffin at one point called an impromptu news conference to announce that Blatt was not going to be fired six weeks into his five-year contract.

The person who deserves the most credit for orchestrating the turnaround is the one who took most of the blame for creating the need for a turnaround.

Blatt.

“He’s a great coach and he’s going to be around here for a long time,” Golden State coach Steve Kerr said. “He’s been coaching for 20 years. He knows what he’s doing. I’m happy to see he’s on smoother water now.”

Nobody has to sell Kerr on Blatt. Before this season Kerr, who truly is a rookie coach, interviewed Blatt for a spot as an assistant on the Warriors’ staff. At the same time, Blatt was offered the head coaching job with the Cavs.

“What I liked about him was his experience. He had a great reputation. But he got a better offer,” Kerr said.

“Obviously it turned out good for both sides,” Blatt said.

Kerr admits that Blatt “had to go through a little growth process to learn the NBA.”

That happened early in the season, when the Cavs staggered out of the gate, and looked like a team with too many agendas and not enough commitment to defense to contend for anything other than Underachievers of the Year.

It was the kind of start that can cost coaches their jobs, no matter where they are in their contract — and rumors quickly started that it might cost Blatt his.

Then LeBron James took a rest.

“People forget that LeBron has been to the Finals four straight years,” Kerr said. “Michael (Jordan) played in three Finals in a row two different times, and he retired after the third one both times.”

At the start of this season, James was still going through Finals decompression, and it showed in his lackluster play.

“It absolutely saps the life out of you. Especially for a guy like LeBron,” Kerr said of the mental and physical strain star players endure when playing in the NBA Finals, much less four in a row. “He clearly was not himself early in this season, and how could he be?”

After his nine-game break — “I think that helped him emotionally more than anything,” Kerr said — LeBron returned, the Cavs got back on track, and Blatt magically became a better coach.

To his credit, Blatt calmly accepted the early criticism of himself and his team. His general manager made two excellent trades and one great free agent signing, acquiring four rotation players — Timofey Mozgov, J.R. Smith, Iman Shumpert and Kendrick Perkins — and just a few months after nearly becoming an ex-Cavs coach, Blatt is now sitting in the engineer’s seat of a basketball locomotive.

“They are playing as well as anyone in the league right now,” Kerr said.

Part of the maturation of this Cavs team was learning to deal with the fact that even though they haven’t won anything yet, they would get every team’s best shot.

Blatt, however, reminds everyone of the flip side of that coin, especially now that the Cavs are playing like a runaway train.

“The other teams,” he said, with a smile, “are getting our best shot, too.”

source:
http://www.morningjournal.com/sport...ide?utm_source=twitterfeed&utm_medium=twitter

 

[Douglar]

I liked Blatt's rotations last night. Looked like a viable playoff rotation.

The game would have been a closer if Lebron hadn't decided to make a personal statement in the 2nd quarter where he showed world that low arc contested two's are good shots if you just f-n stab them all in the gawdam hoop. Sucks to be the visitor at the Q when that happens.

But even if the Cavs didn't get that run of luck and Lebron had missed all those shots, the team looked good enough that they probably would have still won this one. Great composure. They really frustrated Goldenstate. That comes from Blatt's coaching.

 

[Dribble]

The Warriors have a really good home court crowd too.

Still, I don't think they come out of the West. I saw a team last night that is a little weak mentally. I don't think they'll win a series against a team that gets physical with them and slows the game down.

Exactly, like the Grizzlies for example, I can't see them pass MEM come playoff time.

 

[jyan_osu]

http://grantland.com/the-triangle/y...s-arrived-and-all-it-took-was-a-bowling-trip/

Here’s an incomplete list of structural hurdles that David Blatt had to navigate as head coach before the NBA season even started:

Despite having several decades of experience as a player and a coach, including multiple European domestic league titles and a Euroleague championship, he was essentially viewed as a rookie, because all that experience occurred overseas. I have lost count of how many times I’ve heard some variation of “this isn’t Europe” from basketball fans, writers, and pundits over the course of the season. Blatt was coming into the most high-profile coaching job in the league, and found the Europe-to-America exchange rate had devalued his coaching résumé to basically zero.

Whatever Cavs GM David Griffin says now, it’s pretty fair to assume that if LeBron James wanted Blatt gone during the Cavs’ January swoon, Blatt would be a ghost. And, remember, the Cavs hired Blatt before they knew if LeBron was coming back. You could even make the case that, in terms of intra-team juice power rankings, Blatt came in fourth behind LeBron, Kyrie Irving, and arguably Kevin Love, if he had tried to play the “I won’t re-sign unless this guy leaves” card.
Two of those players who arguably had the juice to put Blatt back on a plane to Israel, Irving and Love, had never been in the playoffs and were known minus defenders.

If you’re looking for vindication in the NBA, you’ve come to the wrong place. What usually happens is, after a maligned player displays maturity, hits a game winner in the playoffs, or wins the title that no one thought he could win, the broadsides and barbs just kind of stop. No settling of accounts, no I-told-you-sos; the NBA cycle just moves too quickly to dwell on things. There’s always another game, another series, another deal, another season.

For NBA coaches, that dynamic is even more pronounced because it’s basically impossible to accurately quantify what a coach brings to a team. Like the music in a film, typically we notice coaches only when they’re bad or when they’re extraordinary.

Offensive and defensive schemes, play calls out of timeouts, clock management, and lineups are the obvious ways to gauge competence. Those are the parts of coaching that most easily comport with the metaphor of coach as chess player. Unlike chess pieces, though, basketball players have these often inconvenient free wills, complete with personal agendas that may not jibe with their teammates’ goals. Chess pieces don’t care about minutes or who starts. A coach can design the most brilliant scheme in the world, but if he can’t convince his players to run it, then his or her basketball acumen is basically useless.

A coach has to be part strategist, part therapist, and part politician. And of all those hats, the shrink hat is the heaviest. Think about it — what is the most memorable characteristic of great NBA coaches? It’s almost always illustrated by some anecdote about their motivational style. Phil Jackson burning sage, beating Native American drums, and handing out Carlos Castaneda books. Pat Riley and Tom Thibodeau’s tyrannical practice regimes. Doc Rivers invoking ubuntu and hiding cash in the Staples Center drop ceiling like a motivational tooth fairy. Gregg Popovich’s uncommon simpatico with Tim Duncan and love of wine. It’s why we delight in Stan Van Gundy bellowing about forming a fucking wall.

David Blatt weathered two months of speculation, during which Cavs players were allegedly blowing off his plays (true) and agitating for Tyronn Lue to take over (unproven). In January, he made the kind of unforced error that bolsters an out-of-his-depth charge when he referred to Love as “not a max player yet.” Blatt was trying to reference the reality of Love’s contract situation, not his actual talent. Regardless, that was not a good look. On January 13, with LeBron out for an extended Miami rest-and-rehab stint, the Cavs sat at 19-20.

Since then, the Cavs have won 18 of their last 20, including Thursday night’s possible Finals preview against the Warriors, in which James went full “You think Harden is the MVP?” against the best team defensive in the league with an array of affirmative heat checks to the tune of 42 points, 11 rebounds, and five assists. He put 20 on Andre Iguodala, 12 or so on Draymond Green, then another 10 on whoever else happened to be in the area.

The addition of Timofey Mozgov has given this team, which used to dwell near the bottom of the league in defensive efficiency, a credible deterrent at the rim. J.R. Smith, on his best behavior due to the apparent paucity of late-night entertainment in Greater Cleveland, is giving the Cavs solid catch-and-shoot spacing. And the Cavs’ starters — Kyrie, J.R., LeBron, Love, and Mozgov — form the league’s BEST LINEUP (minimum 200 minutes).

Before the season, Kevin Pelton’s SCHOENE Skynet computer program projected that the Cavs would put up a historic offensive rating of 118 points per 100 possessions. Cleveland’s starters went into the Warriors game with an offensive rating of 117. Even more impressively, a lineup featuring Irving and Love is somehow surrendering only 92 points per 100 possessions.

The secret of Blatt’s turnaround — along with the trades that brought in Smith, Mozgov, and Iman Shumpert; Love becoming more enmeshed in the offense; and the jettisoning of Dion Waiters — is simple: LeBron. The man responsible for Blatt’s deliverance is the same one who almost cost him his job.

A common observation of James’s career is that he’s always striving to re-create the familial experience of his high school team. In an interview with ESPN’s Kevin Arnovitz, J.R. Moehringer said he discussed this with Buzz Bissinger while Moehringer was working on a profile of James for GQ:

Buzz has probably spent more time around LeBron than any writer on the planet, so I was anxious to run my theory by him. And he agreed in part, that it was clear [James] was replicating his high school experience. I think that’s what it all boiled down to for me. I was surprised that no one put this together. I agree with Buzz that’s it’s dangerous to do pop psychologizing, but it seems to me that [James] has one formula for success in his life and that comes out of his high school experience.

The Cavs’ turnaround began with Blatt’s decision to substitute a bowling trip for practice. A family outing. Since then, James has averaged 27 points, six rebounds, and seven assists.

Recent quotes from LeBron about Blatt are kind, if not particularly warm — generally affirmative, not in awe of any one particular play call or act of motivation. “Every day we get closer and closer,” LeBron said last week. “I think he’s great. He’s handled his first stint in the NBA extremely well so far, and I’m happy to be playing for him.”

When Kendrick Perkins joined the Cavs instead of the Clippers, the binary he drew was unintentionally telling: “I was like, ‘Doc [Rivers]? Or I have a chance to go play with The King (LeBron James). Doc? The King? Uh, I choose The King.” Doc or the King. Not Doc or Blatt. Maybe a few years down the line, veterans chasing one more ’ship will come to Cleveland to play for the vaunted wizard of the Cuyahoga. But for as long as LeBron James wears Cavs colors, Blatt is going to at least have to share the credit, if not stand in the shadows. That’s the thing about LeBron: He was always going to be the next evolutionary step in basketball. Turns out next evolutionary steps don’t need psychologists. They just need someone to drive the bus to the bowling alley.

 

[gourimoko]

I give Blatt immense props...

He gets it.

Last night's defensive rotations were perfect, exactly what I would have done in his shoes. The guy, I think, has made the adjustment to the NBA.

My only qualm with him now is his use of Kevin Love. I get it, it's working, but it might not be the most optimal use of Love.

 

[Jack Brickman]

My only qualm with him now is his use of Kevin Love. I get it, it's working, but it might not be the most optimal use of Love.

It will be interesting to see if how he uses Love changes in the post-season. Kind of like how, last night, LeBron was suddenly playing in the post and Golden State had no idea what to do. We've also seen him go to Love at the elbows a couple of times with predictably good results. I have to imagine he understands what Love can do. Will he just suddenly throw the Love kitchen sink at another team and just laugh while they have no idea what to do about it because it's not on any of our tapes?

 

[The Human Q-Tip]

http://grantland.com/the-triangle/y...s-arrived-and-all-it-took-was-a-bowling-trip/

Here’s an incomplete list of structural hurdles that David Blatt had to navigate as head coach before the NBA season even started:

Despite having several decades of experience as a player and a coach, including multiple European domestic league titles and a Euroleague championship, he was essentially viewed as a rookie, because all that experience occurred overseas. I have lost count of how many times I’ve heard some variation of “this isn’t Europe” from basketball fans, writers, and pundits over the course of the season. Blatt was coming into the most high-profile coaching job in the league, and found the Europe-to-America exchange rate had devalued his coaching résumé to basically zero.

Whatever Cavs GM David Griffin says now, it’s pretty fair to assume that if LeBron James wanted Blatt gone during the Cavs’ January swoon, Blatt would be a ghost. And, remember, the Cavs hired Blatt before they knew if LeBron was coming back. You could even make the case that, in terms of intra-team juice power rankings, Blatt came in fourth behind LeBron, Kyrie Irving, and arguably Kevin Love, if he had tried to play the “I won’t re-sign unless this guy leaves” card.
Two of those players who arguably had the juice to put Blatt back on a plane to Israel, Irving and Love, had never been in the playoffs and were known minus defenders.

If you’re looking for vindication in the NBA, you’ve come to the wrong place. What usually happens is, after a maligned player displays maturity, hits a game winner in the playoffs, or wins the title that no one thought he could win, the broadsides and barbs just kind of stop. No settling of accounts, no I-told-you-sos; the NBA cycle just moves too quickly to dwell on things. There’s always another game, another series, another deal, another season.

For NBA coaches, that dynamic is even more pronounced because it’s basically impossible to accurately quantify what a coach brings to a team. Like the music in a film, typically we notice coaches only when they’re bad or when they’re extraordinary.

Offensive and defensive schemes, play calls out of timeouts, clock management, and lineups are the obvious ways to gauge competence. Those are the parts of coaching that most easily comport with the metaphor of coach as chess player. Unlike chess pieces, though, basketball players have these often inconvenient free wills, complete with personal agendas that may not jibe with their teammates’ goals. Chess pieces don’t care about minutes or who starts. A coach can design the most brilliant scheme in the world, but if he can’t convince his players to run it, then his or her basketball acumen is basically useless.

A coach has to be part strategist, part therapist, and part politician. And of all those hats, the shrink hat is the heaviest. Think about it — what is the most memorable characteristic of great NBA coaches? It’s almost always illustrated by some anecdote about their motivational style. Phil Jackson burning sage, beating Native American drums, and handing out Carlos Castaneda books. Pat Riley and Tom Thibodeau’s tyrannical practice regimes. Doc Rivers invoking ubuntu and hiding cash in the Staples Center drop ceiling like a motivational tooth fairy. Gregg Popovich’s uncommon simpatico with Tim Duncan and love of wine. It’s why we delight in Stan Van Gundy bellowing about forming a fucking wall.

David Blatt weathered two months of speculation, during which Cavs players were allegedly blowing off his plays (true) and agitating for Tyronn Lue to take over (unproven). In January, he made the kind of unforced error that bolsters an out-of-his-depth charge when he referred to Love as “not a max player yet.” Blatt was trying to reference the reality of Love’s contract situation, not his actual talent. Regardless, that was not a good look. On January 13, with LeBron out for an extended Miami rest-and-rehab stint, the Cavs sat at 19-20.

Since then, the Cavs have won 18 of their last 20, including Thursday night’s possible Finals preview against the Warriors, in which James went full “You think Harden is the MVP?” against the best team defensive in the league with an array of affirmative heat checks to the tune of 42 points, 11 rebounds, and five assists. He put 20 on Andre Iguodala, 12 or so on Draymond Green, then another 10 on whoever else happened to be in the area.

The addition of Timofey Mozgov has given this team, which used to dwell near the bottom of the league in defensive efficiency, a credible deterrent at the rim. J.R. Smith, on his best behavior due to the apparent paucity of late-night entertainment in Greater Cleveland, is giving the Cavs solid catch-and-shoot spacing. And the Cavs’ starters — Kyrie, J.R., LeBron, Love, and Mozgov — form the league’s BEST LINEUP (minimum 200 minutes).

Before the season, Kevin Pelton’s SCHOENE Skynet computer program projected that the Cavs would put up a historic offensive rating of 118 points per 100 possessions. Cleveland’s starters went into the Warriors game with an offensive rating of 117. Even more impressively, a lineup featuring Irving and Love is somehow surrendering only 92 points per 100 possessions.

The secret of Blatt’s turnaround — along with the trades that brought in Smith, Mozgov, and Iman Shumpert; Love becoming more enmeshed in the offense; and the jettisoning of Dion Waiters — is simple: LeBron. The man responsible for Blatt’s deliverance is the same one who almost cost him his job.

A common observation of James’s career is that he’s always striving to re-create the familial experience of his high school team. In an interview with ESPN’s Kevin Arnovitz, J.R. Moehringer said he discussed this with Buzz Bissinger while Moehringer was working on a profile of James for GQ:

Buzz has probably spent more time around LeBron than any writer on the planet, so I was anxious to run my theory by him. And he agreed in part, that it was clear [James] was replicating his high school experience. I think that’s what it all boiled down to for me. I was surprised that no one put this together. I agree with Buzz that’s it’s dangerous to do pop psychologizing, but it seems to me that [James] has one formula for success in his life and that comes out of his high school experience.

The Cavs’ turnaround began with Blatt’s decision to substitute a bowling trip for practice. A family outing. Since then, James has averaged 27 points, six rebounds, and seven assists.

Recent quotes from LeBron about Blatt are kind, if not particularly warm — generally affirmative, not in awe of any one particular play call or act of motivation. “Every day we get closer and closer,” LeBron said last week. “I think he’s great. He’s handled his first stint in the NBA extremely well so far, and I’m happy to be playing for him.”

When Kendrick Perkins joined the Cavs instead of the Clippers, the binary he drew was unintentionally telling: “I was like, ‘Doc [Rivers]? Or I have a chance to go play with The King (LeBron James). Doc? The King? Uh, I choose The King.” Doc or the King. Not Doc or Blatt. Maybe a few years down the line, veterans chasing one more ’ship will come to Cleveland to play for the vaunted wizard of the Cuyahoga. But for as long as LeBron James wears Cavs colors, Blatt is going to at least have to share the credit, if not stand in the shadows. That’s the thing about LeBron: He was always going to be the next evolutionary step in basketball. Turns out next evolutionary steps don’t need psychologists. They just need someone to drive the bus to the bowling alley.

What Blatt may not get credit for is that he doesn't seem to care if someone perceives him only as the guy who drives the bus to the bowling alley. He knows what he's contributing, and he knows that the coach isn't the star, and shouldn't try to be. The bottom line for the coach is wins, and nothing more.

The video from the post-game celebration after Kyrie hit the 55 still sticks in my mind. All the players celebrating, and Blatt just walking away with a smile on his face, knowing that it was a players' moment, and knowing that it was not the time for a coach to insert himself.

It's just a sign of his complete faith/confidence in his own skills and knowledge as a coach. I can just picture him and Griffin leaning back in their chairs with self-satisfied smiles, and clinking those glasses in triumph, both knowing the roles they have played and not caring about the glory.

 

[westsidebob]

I wonder how much this guy makes for this kind of inciteful analysis:

View: https://twitter.com/Espngreeny/status/555395026566803456

Since he got you to respond, I hope he was compensated well, since he obviously knows how to incite people.

(I believe you meant to say "insightful", in which case, he's a toolbag.)