“It was a broken team in the locker room": LeBron James and the Cavs had major issues which led to David Blatt's firing in 2016
LeBron James was deemed the biggest reason the Cleveland Cavaliers ultimately sacked former coach David Blatt in the middle of the 2015-16 season. The four-time MVP and Blatt simply weren’t seeing eye to eye and the Cavs didn’t hesitate to side with the basketball superstar.
Despite Cleveland winning the Eastern Conference during the 2014-15 season and the team holding a 30-11 record the following season, Blatt was still axed.
Joe Vardon of The Athletic, had this to report about the events leading to the former coach’s firing:
“It was a broken team in the locker room with factions in each corner and James on an island. James was so tied up in knots through his distrust of Blatt that he wouldn’t allow his teammates to participate in pregame introductions.
“To fix all of this — to repair the locker room and pave the way for James to assert his dominance in harmony with a deeply talented roster — the Cavs turned to a rookie coach who didn’t want the job."
In 2016, the Cavs brought Cleveland its first title since 1964.
And they did so in dramatic fashion.
For the latest episode of “A King’s Reign,” @joevardon sat down with Ty Lue and Channing Frye to relive that historic season.
theathletic.com/4641677/2023/0…
LeBron James was known to have taken over huddles and orchestrated plays after timeouts that Blatt didn’t draw up. Blatt’s struggles in crucial situations gnawed at the Cleveland superstar that he just wouldn’t execute what the coach asked them to do.
The former Maccabi Tel Aviv coach also reportedly shied away from putting Kevin Love, Kyrie Irving and James on the hot seat, especially on defense. Ty Lue was rumored to have been so exasperated with this that he’d ask the film crew to rewind plays and call them out.
The disconnect between LeBron James and David Blatt was so blatant that the players ultimately lost faith in the coach.
Channing Frye, one of James’ teammates, sat down with Joe Vardon in an interview and added his thoughts on the incident:
“It’s not like David Blatt was a bad coach, we just needed someone that could play chess with [Warriors head coach] Steve Kerr at that level, which Ty Lue did.
The Cleveland Cavaliers lost to the Golden State Warriors in the 2015 NBA Finals. Injuries to Kyrie Irving and Kevin Love were the main reasons for their failure. The players must have also felt they couldn’t get over the hump with Blatt leading the coaching staff.
LeBron James’ trust in Ty Lue was a big reason the Cleveland Cavaliers won the 2016 championship
LeBron James and his teammates didn’t just automatically give Ty Lue their trust and confidence once the former assistant coach took over David Blatt’s role. Lue earned it by being honest and by being a leader.
An instant that galvanized the team was when the diminutive coach told the NBA’s biggest star to “shut up” as he got things under control. That trust was critical when the Cleveland Cavaliers went down 3-1 against the 73-9 Golden State Warriors in the 2016 championship.
Frye illustrated how LeBron James only got better with Ty Lue at the helm:
"Ty Lue was like, ‘Thank you for your opinion, but we’re gonna do it this way.’ When that started to come about, Bron [James] really started to stop thinking the whole game and started thinking court stuff.”
The rookie head coach took his lumps, learned from them and eventually helped James deliver Cleveland’s first franchise championship.
Also read: "It was always sort of the unspoken plan" - Joe Vardon reveals Cavs always knew about possibility of getting LeBron James back