The scrutiny surrounding LeBron James and the Cleveland Cavaliers this season has been downright suffocating at times, and recent comments from ESPN’s Brian Windhorst have added a new wrinkle to the debacle.
As a guest on Bill Simmons’ popular podcast “The B.S. Report,” Windhorst claimed that LeBron has commandeered the in-game play-calling responsibilities, which only served to further the perception of David Blatt as an inconsequential puppet leader operating under The King’s iron-fisted rule.
According to Dave McMenamin of ESPN.com, Blatt tried to clarify those comments after practice Wednesday.
“I don’t think that’s peculiar,” Blatt said. “When the game is going on and you are in the heat of the battle at times, you can’t get a message through or you don’t want to stop the flow, so a guy may [call the play on his own].
“We have sets that we know what we’re going to use going in. You know, we have a package that we’re going to use going in and at times, according to the flow of the game, somebody may call out a play. I don’t think that’s unusual.”
Both he and LeBron dispelled the notion that James simply has free reign over how the offense is run. Rather, Blatt apparently is the one who dictates the offensive sets during timeouts but also allows LeBron a considerable amount of freedom to make in-game adjustments on the fly.
Still, the idea that LeBron is hijacking the offense and undermining his coach is obviously a much more salacious take on the situation that makes for great media fodder. As with everything, the gulf between perception and reality is often insurmountable.
