When LeBron James decided to return to the Cavaliers to fulfill his promise of bringing a championship to Cleveland, it quickly became evident that he and former Cavs head coach David Blatt were not a good fit. Had LeBron made his free agency decision sooner, the relationship could have been avoided in the first place.
While appearing on Adrian Wojnarowski’s podcast this week, former Cavs general manager David Griffin spoke about the team’s decision to hire Blatt in 2014. The move came about a month before LeBron signed with Cleveland, and Griffin said the Cavs hired Blatt because they thought he was the guy that could help their young team rebuild. When James returned, the goals of the franchise changed abruptly.
“Ironically, the addition of LeBron made (Blatt’s) job infinitely more difficult because of the window in which he was going to have to figure it all out,” Griffin explained. “It just wasn’t fair to David and really wasn’t fair to the group as a whole the way it worked out. In the end, that was my fault.”
Griffin was then asked if the Cavs would have waited to fill their coaching vacancy if they knew LeBron was coming back.
“Oh, 100 percent,” Griffin said. “We didn’t believe for a second LeBron was coming back at that point. We really believed he was going to take at least a year and figure out whether or not we could start to build in a positive direction. … I certainly thought that LeBron, being the absolute savant of basketball savants, was going to take his time and watch us from afar and decide whether or not he could trust our process.
“We were certainly blessed that he chose to buy in right away, but I think it certainly changed the dynamic in that if we had foreseen that it was that legitimate he was coming back, we certainly would have done something different.”
The Cavs had the best record in the Eastern Conference at the time they decided to fire Blatt, and the move had LeBron written all over it. If you want to know how much respect LeBron had for Blatt, this video should remind you. James is basically a second GM in Cleveland, so it makes sense that he would have been consulted on a head coach — especially if the Cavs were led to believe it would increase their chances of bringing him back.
