Why LeBron James Is Right When He Says David Blatt Is ‘Catching Heat Because He’s Coaching Me’

After LeBron James ended Game 4 in such dramatic fashion, the Internet mob — which is increasingly including established reporters — turned their impulsive head on Cavs coach David Blatt. A string of stories about his job security percolated to the surface, like Grendel bubbling to the flotsam resting on top of his murky lair looking for his dinner as Beowulf defend’s the castle. In that analogy, LeBron James is Beowulf and Grendel’s mother.

NBC wondered “how safe” Blatt is as coach of the Cavs. That came after postulating whether David Blatt would return as coach of the Cavs next season. Sports Illustrated wrote “there’s no denying who controls the Cavs now.” Even the New York Times, in their haughty, Grey Lady sort of way, mentioned the scrutiny he’s now under. The estimable Will Leitch wrote that coaches are superficial cogs in the system, and NBA teams don’t really need them.

While Will makes some great points, he’s buying into the ubiquitous theme of this Cavs season; namely, that the Cavs are LeBron’s team, and any time they lose, it’s because someone else failed to live up to position on the team. Cleveland only struggled with a healthy Kevin Love and Kyrie Irving because LeBron was on sabbatical and David Blatt can’t coach. That’s been the narrative throughout Blatt’s rookie season as coach. It comes with the territory, as LeBron notes above.

David Blatt almost cost the Cavs Game 4 by trying to call a timeout when the Cavs didn’t have any. Tyrone Lue, who earlier this season was supposedly calling timeouts and running plays literally and figuratively behind David Blatt’s back, pulled him back so LeBron could personify HERO Ball. Let’s turn that bone-headed decision with the stress of the playoffs into a referendum on Blatt’s entire tenure at the helm of the Cavs. No, really, that’s totally fair (if there was a sarcasm font, we’d include it instead of this parenthetical).

This is when you say it comes with the territory and roll your eyes while smacking a piece of gum and tweeting out a hot new mix tape you really just copped from a Sasha Frere-Jones tweet.

Blatt’s almost Chris Webber is indictment No. 1, but most people are ignoring one pretty important caveat to that brain fart:

But when Blatt called for LeBron to inbounds the ball on the game’s final possession, LeBron resisted and instead made history. That’s indictment No. 2, even though Jimmy Chitwood did the same thing at the end of Hoosiers and there hasn’t ever been a more tyrannical coach than Norman Dale.

Yes, that’s a fictitious movie about a small school’s real-life run through the Indiana high school basketball tournament, but the same precepts apply: sometimes a player overrules the coach and it works. Often, the opposite happens. What if LeBron had inbounded the ball and gotten it back to sink the game-winning shot, like Blatt may have drawn up (yes, we know there was only 0.8 seconds left)? What if another player had done so? There are a lot of what if’s to the end of Game 4 (What if the Cavs hadn’t squandered three timeouts to throw the ball in from the sideline? What if LeBron hadn’t aggressively tried to split the double-team he encountered at mid-court? What if ad infinitum).

UPROXX’s smart senior writer was driving into Cleveland yesterday to take in Game 5 tonight. Here’s what he wrote us this morning: “All anyone on Cleveland radio could talk about when I drove up yesterday was that he’s going to be fired if they lose this series.”

He probably will be. Dan Gilbert has no qualms cutting ties with a coach if he thinks it’s in his own best interests, which is a not-so-veiled way of saying LeBron James’ interests. There’s a mortgage-backed securities joke in there somewhere, but we’re worried about what the blowback might look like. A coach capitulating to a player isn’t a new concept, but it’s rare that it plays out on such a grand stage like this before. Except, it’s happened with LeBron in the past.

Despite an appearance to the contrary, LeBron has deflected a lot of the criticism lobbed Blatt’s way over the last day. But the parallel’s with LeBron’s time in Miami are hard to miss. Most people assumed Erik Spoelstra was such a wonderful coach for LeBron, Dwyane Wade and Chris Bosh because he got the hell out of their way — specifically LeBron’s way, which was most important. They’re wrong of course because Spoels was smart enough to conjoin a small-ball (Bosh at the five) helter-skelter defense with a LeBron/D-Wade and shooters offensive scheme that carried the Heat to two titles and three Finals appearances (he hadn’t really figured it out until Year 2 of the Big 3 run in Miami, which is why we’re neglecting to mention that first Finals tripe in 2011). Yet that first year of Spoels and LeBron was just a week-by-week discussion about why Pat Riley should be the coach.

David Blatt hadn’t coached in the NBA until this season, and all of a sudden he was tasked with coaching the best player in the world. Smart alecks on the Internet think it’s open season on Blatt because any numskull could coach LeBron; he’s just that good. But LeBron fled Miami primarily to avoid an aging roster that forced him to do more and more each game to succeed. D-Wade wasn’t getting any healthier and the supporting cast crumbled against the Spurs in 2014. But now he’s in the exact same spot in Cleveland, except Blatt’s a great scapegoat. He doesn’t have the hardware Spoelstra had to survive the 2014 Finals demolition at the hands of the Spurs.

Kevin Love is gone until next season, if he returns at all, and Kyrie Irving is gritting his teeth through two injuries to his lower-body. Why do you think LeBron’s field goal percentage has plummeted this series? Jimmy Butler’s a very good defender, but James’ struggles shooting the ball have just as much told do with all the other things he has to take on because of Love and Kyrie’s absence. He’s been tasked with carrying the Cavs again by himself, and when they win it’s a testament to LeBron’s greatness and Blatt has to make fighter pilot comparisons to the media.

If the Cavs lose tonight, it’ll come despite a Herculean effort by James as he ably tries to carry an ineffectual coach and a banged up team. This is the narrative the public wants, so the media is giving it to them. Even though it’s just a snippet of the whole picture. Explaining it with more depth comfortably avoids having to make people plunge beyond the surface storyline. Something a lot of us would rather not do. Leave the heavy lifting to others, but not David Blatt — that guy can’t coach.