Not even LeBron James could get away with something like this without saying he’s sorry. And fortunately for the Cleveland Cavaliers superstar, his once-embattled coach poked fun at the strange circumstances, too.
After he inexplicably sauntered to the bench and sat down mid-possession in his team’s win over the Atlanta Hawks on Saturday night, James told ESPN’s Dave McMenamin that he expressed regret to his teammates for such a sudden and jarring err in judgement – but didn’t elaborate on the source of his obvious frustration.
“I blew a gasket. You know what that mean?” James said after the game. “I apologized to my teammates for it.”
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James was asked what he was so upset about, considering the Cavs’ lead was so large at the time.
“That’s not the point,” he said.
Cavaliers coach David Blatt threw support behind his star with some much-needed jest.
“Well, he was frustrated. He knew we weren’t playing right,” Blatt said. “And (he) thought we were playing hockey. A hockey sub.
“You know, Bron is a lot of things — a lot of great things — but probably where you’re not going to see him is out there playing for the (Lake Erie) Monsters (an AHL team based in Cleveland) or the (New York) Rangers. You know what I mean?
“But he was frustrated. I understand his frustration, but obviously, you shouldn’t do that.”
Ever quick-witted, James responded to Blatt’s quip with his own about his frequent “hockey assists” – passes that lead directly to a recorded assist by a teammate. Cleveland’s floor general, by the way, has recorded just nine secondary assists over the season’s first few weeks, 13 less than Matthew Dellavedova’s team-high mark.
The Cavaliers’ best player and their coach, apparently, were both wrong: James hasn’t been playing much hockey-hockey of any kind recently. Jokes aside, Blatt’s amused reaction to James’ gaffe reminds of just how far their relationship has come since early summer rumors of a potential change on the Cleveland sidelines.
That talk, by the way, was never substantiated. But enough people with access to the Cavaliers reported discord between James and Blatt throughout last season to make the former’s recent comments especially noteworthy. Here’s the two-time champion on his second-year coach courtesy of The Associated Press.
“He does his job, as great as any coach can do in this league,” James said Thursday morning at Cleveland’s shootaround before its night game against Milwaukee. “It’s up for us to go out and produce.”
Blatt, of course, has obvious incentive to defend James at every turn. Growing cross-ways with a living Cleveland legend doesn’t do much for job security. Either way, his reaction to James’ confounding “blown gasket” is a perfect exercise in how to control the narrative of a potentially hot-button topic.
The Cavaliers already play under the microscope. They don’t need additional scrutiny afforded by Blatt airing his grievance over a player’s mistake, a reality of which he’s obviously aware and James is surely appreciative.
(Via ESPN, via The Associated Press)
