The Cleveland Cavaliers fired head coach David Blatt yesterday a year and a half after they hired him to coach a rebuilding team. Cleveland hired Blatt before they signed Lebron James and traded for Kevin Love in the summer of 2014. Blatt, who has over 700 wins internationally as a coach thought he was going to coach a young team. Instead, he inherited a veteran team loaded with primadonnas.

By all accounts, Blatt is an abrasive personality. He can be tough to play for. That approach may have worked for him in Israel or when he coached the Russian National team but it wasn’t going to work coaching a virtual all-star team like the Cavs. Lebron and his buddies never respected Blatt. He never played in the NBA and that was the primary reason he could never gain their respect. 

Instead, Lebron and friends wanted a coach who played in the league. Enter former Celtic Tyronn Lue, a Doc Rivers discipline. Lue was a finalist when Blatt was hired and the organization liked Lue so much, they offered him head coaching money to be an assistant under Blatt. Bad idea. The players immediately gravitated towards Lue and that created more tension between Blatt and the team. 

Fast forward to yesterday. The Cavs fired Blatt after a 30-11 start to this season. Sure, the Cavaliers have struggled of late but they are still leading the Eastern Conference and are poised to make another run at the Finals regardless of whose coaching them. Now, they will go from a guy with experience on the bench to a guy who has never been a head coach. Yeah, there won’t be any growing pains at all. 

David Blatt is capable of coaching in the NBA. Cleveland wasn’t the ideal spot. He deserved better. I hope he gets another chance. I think he deserves it. You can’t win in a situation where the star player dictates to the owner and the GM. Blatt was in a no win situation. Getting fired after leading your team to the Finals in your first year is unheard of. It’s inexcusable. Shame on the Cavs. It’s embarrassing what they did to Blatt. Now they better hope the Tyrann Lue experiment works. I’m just saying.