LeBron's Handling of Blatt Unbecoming

http://espn.go.com/blog/marc-stein/post/_/id/3896/lebrons-handling-of-blatt-unbecoming




LeBron's handling of Blatt unbecoming
1d

Marc Stein, ESPN Senior Writer



I have a question for LeBron James that I really hope he'll field someday.

A question that can be asked a variety of ways:

What kind of coach do you want?

Who out there is a coach for whom you'd actually like to play?

Who could ‎the Cleveland Cavaliers hire that would earn your backing?

I don't have the answers to any of those queries. Cavs assistant coach Tyronn Lue is my best guess.

I know this much, though: James is too brilliant as a basketball player, too truly great, to behave the way he did toward David Blatt during the NBA Finals.

We literally saw "Peak LeBron" and the corresponding "LeBron Nadir" over those six gripping games with the Golden State Warriors. He ‎had staffers from the 67-win Warriors almost quaking at night in fear of the havoc he was wreaking, such was his genius in controlling tempo and carrying a skeleton of a roster to a 2-1 lead that actually made you think the Cavs could win it all with Kyrie Irving, Kevin Love and his beloved Anderson Varejao all sidelined.

And we likewise saw LeBron emasculate Blatt in ways that are simply unbecoming of a player of James' legend-in-the-making stature.

I saw it from close range in my role as sideline reporter through the Finals for ESPN Radio. James essentially called timeouts and made substitutions. He openly barked at Blatt after decisions he didn't like. He huddled frequently with Lue, often looking at anyone other than Blatt.

There was James, in one instance I witnessed from right behind the bench, shaking his head vociferously in protest after one play Blatt drew up in the third quarter of Game 5, amounting to the loudest nonverbal scolding you could imagine -- which forced Blatt, in front of his whole team, to wipe the board clean and draw up something else.

I understand James had no input in Blatt’s hiring and had to roll with him in less-than-ideal circumstances. But it struck me as a rather unflattering look for an all-time great, no matter how inept he might think the coach is.

How is any fellow Cavalier going to treat Blatt with something resembling reverence when James treats him like a bench ornament in plain view?

How can James publicly laud his own leadership, as he so often does, when setting that sort of tone?

My ESPN.com colleague Brian Windhorst, who ranks as the most credentialed LeBronologist there is after shadowing James since his teens, went on SVP & Russillo on Wednesday and posited that No. 23 actually wouldn't mind if the Euroleague import keeps coaching the Cavs because he "likes having Blatt to kick around."

I wouldn’t expect to hear anyone in Cleveland dispute it, either.

Because they can't.

Blatt, for the record, is by no means faultless here. It's up to the coach, in the Big Boy NBA, to earn buy-in from the players. For all the legitimate arguments that the job he wound up with is not the one he signed up for, given that James came home to Ohio after Dan Gilbert handpicked the 55-year-old Boston native over Alvin Gentry, Blatt has to absorb a slice of the responsibility if that hasn't happened. It's on him to convince his players he's up to the task.

It was on Blatt, furthermore, to make better use of Timofey Mozgov -- offensively and defensively -- after his bust-outs in Games 2 and 4. It was likewise on Blatt to find better schemes to disrupt Andre Iguodala in the series of his life as opposed to leaving him open game after game and asking Mozgov to chase after him. You also expected him to coax more out of J.R. Smith after Blatt proved more than once while coaching abroad that he had a knack for reaching enigmatic players.

The disconnect with James is no alibi for any of that.

But I repeat: James' otherworldly performance in this series, on top of everything he's done for Northeast Ohio just by returning to the area and revitalizing it beyond words, doesn't make any of this stuff palatable.

The charade can't continue. This isn’t about whether Blatt deserves to be brought back for a second season, because he obviously does after going so far in the playoffs -- and with Cleveland improving its defense so drastically along the way in the postseason -- in spite of all the injuries.

This is purely and simply about James -- if he can't bring himself to back Blatt with more gusto going forward -- going right to Gilbert and telling him to hire Jeff Van Gundy, Tom Thibodeau or the most likely suspect: Lue.

Someone he's prepared to support.

Support like Tim Duncan was providing Gregg Popovich long before he was POP!

Or the kind of support that Iguodala, your newly minted Finals MVP, reluctantly but ultimately submitted when a rookie coach named Steve Kerr -- with far less of a coaching résumé than Blatt's -- showed up in Oakland and told Iggy he needed him to come off the bench for the first time in his life to make Harrison Barnes -- and, by extension, Golden State as a whole -- function more effectively.

The new heights LeBron James hit in these Finals, shouldering a bigger load than any superstar we've seen on the championship stage and slowing the mighty Dubs like no one else could with his brain as much as his brawn, left little doubt that he's one of the three to five greatest individual forces this game has ever witnessed.

Yet when folks question why I would dare suggest that Duncan deserves consideration in the same conversation, here's my answer: Timmy ticks every single box when it comes to serving as the ultimate tentpole upon which to hoist a franchise.

Eight years removed from the Finals in which Duncan's Spurs swept aside young James and a different set of overmatched Cavs -- eight years after Duncan told the 22-year-old James that he would soon own this league -- I found myself coming back to the same thought.

He's too damn good to behave this way.




bob



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Stein is a good friend of Blatt's, and had been working for years to get him an NBA head coaching job.

Stein spent his summers in Israel as a kid and most of his family is there.

Stein really crossed a line here though, in attacking LeBron so strongly, in defense of his good friend and co-religionist.

Here's a comment from a deadspin article:

Glen Rice Nails Another 3Kyle Wagner
6/18/15 7:55pm

preface:

1. I’m Jewish

2. I CAN’T STAND how PC our world has become that the following hasn’t been pointed out yet.

Marc Stein is a proud Jew who roots for Israeli sports and Israeli athletes. He’s stumped for Blatt to get an NBA coaching gig for years before the Cleveland job, check out some of his BS Report appearances. My first knowledge of David Blatt’s Euroleague success came from Stein’s Twitter. He also wasn’t coy about saying Omri Casspi was his favorite player in the league when he was having his career year for the Kings.

I’m a fan of Stein’s work, but it needs to pointed out that he certainly has a horse in this race.

http://deadspin.com/why-should-lebron-james-let-david-blatt-pretend-to-be-t-1712374977

Blatt was not only a rookie head coach in the NBA, but he didn't even have ANY NBA experience.

LeBron is the best player in the world and has been in the Finals what, 5-6 times in a row.

The idea that LeBron should quietly follow a rookie coach with zero NBA experience is laughable, and reeks of the racism that Israel is famous for.

http://yagocolas.com/2015/06/18/on-lebron-james-and-coaching/

Stein went on to contrast this “unpalatable behavior” to Spurs’ star Tim Duncan’s support for Gregg Popovich, even before the coach was “POP.” I think this is the worst kind of moralizing, patronizing, unconsciously racist reprimand, resting on a tower of unstated and unsavory assumptions with a long history in the culture of basketball. Please read carefully: those adjectives in the last sentence do not refer to Stein himself, but rather to his reprimand, to the assumptions it makes, and to the history of basketball.

Let me tell you a story to clarify why I think this and why I feel so incensed. Back in the Fall of 1981, Magic Johnson told reporters that he wasn’t “having any fun” and that he wanted to leave the Lakers. Less than twenty-fours later, Lakers’ owner Jerry Buss fired Lakers Coach Paul Westhead, replacing him with assistant coach Pat Riley. The next night, as the Lakers took the floor in Los Angeles, perhaps for the first time in his life, Magic Johnson’s own fans loudly booed him.

Cavs owner Dan Gilbert accepts award from Friends of the Israel Defense Forces (IDF)


At 3:00 Gilbert makes clear his loyalty is to Israel, not the US, and that the best way to serve Israel besides serving in the army is to give it money, and to get the US military to fight it's battles.

Then he goes on and on about Israeli basketball, his love of which was obviously the impetus behind the hiring of Blatt before Blatt had even one year of assistant coaching experience in the NBA.

Lastly, he gives a shout out to Danny Ferry, and praises his character. Which is fitting, given that Ferry was just bought out of his contract with the Hawks for being blatantly racist.
http://deadspin.com/hawks-minority-owner-gm-danny-ferry-got-racist-on-a-co-1632301212

Gilbert is a loan shark and casino/vice peddler. Obviously not concerned about being called out for embodying the worst stereotypes.

I hope Gilbert circles the wagons around his fellow Israeli, coach Blatt, and that LeBron walks away this summer, leaving them high and dry.

Regardless of what kind of vested interest Stein may have had, the behavior he describes fits perfectly with what I'd expect from Lebron James.  As expert as Lebron is with a basketball, he's totally out to lunch in terms of dealing with the human condition.  What represents constructive behavior in his view is going with the ego that has been tailored primarily by his basketball ability.

Some would say he's a basketball genius.  (That one should be in the Museum of Basketball Hyperbole.  Perhaps I'll feel differently about the "genius" thing when I see him coaching dominant teams in the future.)  I would suggest that—simply based on his public pronouncements and actions—he's a sociological moron.

Many people cut him untold amounts of slack in his behavior because of his basketball ability.  I feel that ego of that immensity has no place in any walk of life on this earth.  Perhaps on Mars, which would be a worthy destination for him.

Sam

sam wrote:Regardless of what kind of vested interest Stein may have had, the behavior he describes fits perfectly with what I'd expect from Lebron James.  As expert as Lebron is with a basketball, he's totally out to lunch in terms of dealing with the human condition.  What represents constructive behavior in his view is going with the ego that has been tailored primarily by his basketball ability.

Some would say he's a basketball genius.  (That one should be in the Museum of Basketball Hyperbole.  Perhaps I'll feel differently about the "genius" thing when I see him coaching dominant teams in the future.)  I would suggest that—simply based on his public pronouncements and actions—he's a sociological moron.

Many people cut him untold amounts of slack in his behavior because of his basketball ability.  I feel that ego of that immensity has no place in any walk of life on this earth.  Perhaps on Mars, which would be a worthy destination for him.

Sam

Sam, I'd argue that the best player in the game deserves an experienced and competent coach. Not a bush league rookie Chosen as coach because he's a dual citizen like Gilbert:
This is junior high stuff

My blood boils because it was nominal Americans like Gilbert, Blatt, and Stein who pushed the US into war with Iraq, driven exclusively by their loyalty to Israel.

Chickenhawks to the extreme, and then they have the nerve to raise money for the Israeli army rather than the US soldiers who actually fight their wars for them.

Here's Gilbert's fellow casino godfather being completely frank about it:
Sheldon Adelson in Israel regrets having worn the Uniform of the United States

Here's local hero Myra Kraft showing her true colors:

On her recent visit to the Jewish state, the Jerusalem Post asked Myra Kraft, a leader in American Jewish philanthropy to Israel and the wife of Robert Kraft, the owner of the New England Patriots, how she would feel about one of her four sons moving to Israel and joining the army.

Myra wrote:I would go with him. I always wanted to live here. As for joining the army, over Vietnam, I would have had an issue,
because I didn’t believe in it. The same goes for the war in Iraq. I
don’t know why we’re there. I would hate to have one of my sons
fighting there. Iran’s the problem, not Iraq. But, as far as fighting
for Israel is concerned, there is no problem.

- See more at: http://mondoweiss.net/2008/03/the-jpost-asked#sthash.IPO6c8D8.dpuf

Here's fellow NBA owner Donald Sterling describing how blacks like LeBron are treated in Blatt, Gilbert, and Marc Stein's favorite country
Donald Sterling vs The Black Jews of Israel

George W Bush, President; not Jewish.
Dick Cheney, Vice-President; not Jewish.
Donald Rumsfeld, Secretary of Defense; not Jewish.
Condoleeza Rice, National Security Advisor; not Jewish.
George Tenet, CIA Director; not Jewish.
Stephen Hadley, Deputy NSA; not Jewish.

Those were the members of the National Security Council in 2003. Not one of them was Jewish.

For the first few years of the war in Iraq David Blatt was in Israel coaching Maccabi-Tel Aviv.    He then coached in Russia, Italy and Greece.  In other words, when the war began and raged he was not here.  You are tarring someone with a broad brush because he belongs to an identifiable group and not because of his individual actions.  I would ask for evidence that David Blatt, a man who has spent most of his adult life with people of African descent as a coach throughout the world, is a racist.  If anything, his willingness to swallow LeBron's shit instead of drawing a legitimate line that demarks a player's role and the head coach's role shows he is not racist.  There is also no evidence that he treated white players like Love and Dellavadova better than non-superstar players like Shumpert or Smith or Jones.  I googled to see if there is any citation, true or otherwise, that claims that Davi Blatt treated Israeli players on his Maccabi team differently than non-Israeli.  I found none.

Sheldon Adelson is an unabashed Republican, as is Dan Gilbert and one or two other Americans who are not Jewish (including those, who actually had some influence of US foreign policy, above).

This thread has moved away from basketball and into the realm of political opinion and personal animus.  There are other forums for such discussions.


bob


.

One of the few regulations we have on this board is that, although they may be important topics in general, political issues (including those of international dimension) are apt to be too highly charged to result in constructive conversation here.  We've applied a similar perspective to matters of religious preference or race.  Unfortunately, the fact that so many people feel strongly about such topics is not a reason to suspend these guidelines; in fact, it exacerbates their importance.

Thanks for your help.

Sam

I'll only point out that right behind those names in the Bush administration were names like Wolfowitz, Feith, Perle, Libby, Zakheim, Kagan, Abrams, on and on and on.

Bob, let's just say that Dan Gilbert, Blatt, and Marc Stein have a lot in common and a very close bond, and that this bond played a role in Blatt's hiring in the first place, and Stein's wagon circling around his fellow special friend.

Bob wrote:Sheldon Adelson is an unabashed Republican, as is Dan Gilbert and one or two other Americans who are not Jewish (including those, who actually had some influence of US foreign policy, above).

The notion that Adelson and Gilbert don't have major influence on US foreign policy is way beneath you, Bob.

Please, guys!

Sam

Blatt lost the whole team a long time ago. Their season turned around when LeBron and Tryone Lue took control, finishing 33-3 or something. Stein pretends this is just about LeBron, but he probably knows the whole team ignores Blatt, just like the whole team has way more NBA knowledge and experience.

And guess who Marc Stein's favorite NBA player is? Omri Casspi. What a coincidence.

All this aside, I don't know if Gilbert has fully learned his lesson. Putting Blatt in this head coach position with no NBA experience almost worked. Came up 2 games short. But again, no title for Cleveland.

Last time we were in this position, LeBron bolted because ownership wasn't surrounding him with at least a Big 3. Well, through draft picks and time, Gilbert put together a Big 2 and added Lebron, or some will say Lebron added himself. But you still need a coach with some NBA experience, some time in the trenches. Blatt doesn't fit that bill and in the end, he came up short.

We'll have to see how this plays out this year on As The (LeBron) World Turns!!

db

Some employees, if they think their employers are in over their heads, actually try to use their influence to help the employers.  The ones with vast egos are more likely to take the route of undermining authority.  A matter of personal preference—or inclination—I guess.

Sam

I have a question for LeBron James that I really hope he'll field someday.

A question that can be asked a variety of ways:

What kind of coach do you want?

Who out there is a coach for whom you'd actually like to play?

Who could ‎the Cleveland Cavaliers hire that would earn your backing?

These are valid questions.

So far, there doesn't seem to be any coach that LeBron will accept coaching from. Spoelstra, with Riley's backing, got him to actually play team ball for a couple of years and work on his post game, despite his resistance. However, he got fed up with Spoelstra and Riley exercising that kind of authority and left Miami.

I doubt very seriously that he'd tolerate being coached by Popovich. Pop would treat him like everyone else, yell at him when he deserved it, and do all the stuff that coaches are supposed to do. From what I can tell, LeBron doesn't want to put up with that.

In Cleveland, LeBron doesn't want to be coached -- he's the greatest player in the world, so why should he need coaching? -- and he expects (and gets) veto authority over decisions like what offense to run. Elevate Tyronn Lue to head coach, and LeBron will find himself dissatisfied with Lue before long.

Duncan, Curry, Durant, Chris Paul -- all these guys allow themselves to be coached. But LeBron is so good and so empowered that he grates under anyone trying to coach him. As long as he thinks that way and is allowed to act that way, it will be a flaw in every team he plays for that lowers the ceiling of what his team can achieve. It's not impossible for him to win another title, but quality teams like last year's Spurs and this year's Warriors will always have the advantage.

Guys, thanks for moving off politics. Re coaches, how on earth could the Bulls let Thibodeau go? IMHO he's one of the very best in the NBA.

That was tough on Thibs. But the DRose situation had to be eating away at him, given the promise that job originally had. They never could get it together.

Thibs had so much to offer had everybody been healthy. How many times have we said that on this site? Injuries (or dodging them) are a much bigger part of your chances of winning the championship and play such a big part in chemistry and synergy than we lead on. On one side, just ask CLE. On the other side, just as SAS. One had huge momentum going into the playoffs and 2 of their Big 3 go down and no title. The other had and has had a bunch of perceived old guys and somehow manages to win 5 Championships over the last 15 years, yet injuries never seem to come SAS's way to the point that they derail them from their stated objective.

But I digress. As for Thibs, maybe it was time. Maybe he wanted to move on but like some of us, he was going down with the sinking ship. He wasn't going to quit. He had to be fired. He wanted out, though, but would hang around and hope for the best. One thing for sure, he won't be on the sidelines very long unless he wants to be. Should be very high demand for this guy.

Hmmmm. Would he consider coming back to Boston along side Stevens to shore up the defensive ranks since that's his forte or has that ship sailed already? Just a thought.

db

DB,

A couple of weeks ago, I brought up the possibility of a Thibs return to Boston as a defensive assistant.  The big question people asked was whether he'd be willing to take a "backwards step," once he'd had the top job, and to allow his coaching momentum to go on hiatus.

It's a fair question.  At the time, I remember wondering whether any money he might earn in Boston would add to his Chicago severance or whether a Celtics salary would reduce the money the Bulls owe him.  The prospect of double-dipping, while taking a year off from the inevitable tensions of high-level coaching, might potentially hold some appeal for Thibs.

Sam

Sam,

Sorry I missed that post of yours. I'm in the wrong career. I have tons of ideas. Most of them original but some have already been suggested. I just keep throwing them out there! I like everyone on this site would LOVE to have Thibs back as Defensive Specialist Coach. That would just about do it. With Danny's maneuvering in the next couple of days combined with the triumphant return of T-Squared would usher us straight to the Finals next season!!

db