Another Slow Start May Be Turning into Another Turnaround Story for Cavs' Blatt
CLEVELAND — Looking back now, several months later, it's easier for Joe Ingles to evaluate what happened at Maccabi Tel Aviv last season, to put that team's transformation, from extreme frustration to unexpected elation, into more proper perspective. "Yeah, we did start slow," the rookie forward told Bleacher Report earlier this week, after his new team, the Utah Jazz, lost to the Cleveland Cavaliers. "It was more probably the fact that we did have a lot of new guys, over half the team was new and had big roles on the team."
Then?
"We had some injuries early on, we brought in some new guys halfway through," Ingles said.
But not before they lost some games that, in Ingles' view, "we shouldn't have lost."
And not before the public and the press began to question whether David Blatt was still the right man to be Maccabi's coach.
"Probably like these guys early on," Ingles said.
"These guys" are the Cavaliers, who also came to training camp with a roster drastically different from the season before; who also have had injuries (Anderson Varejao out for the season, LeBron James missing eight straight games in one stretch); who also have had some embarrassing losses (in Utah, Nuggets at home, in Philadelphia); who also have made midseason changes (with Timofey Mozgov and J.R. Smith assimilating nicely so far, and Iman Shumpert close to debuting); and who have that same coach, a coach who has been facing similar scrutiny.
"I don't know how close he was [to getting fired from Maccabi]," Ingles said of Blatt. "There was talk about it. I honestly don't think they would have ever done it, because we all loved playing for him. I think the people at the top knew that we were a new team. It was going to take time. And from halfway through, we were all healthy and it showed. You get to know each other and the system he wanted to play over there, you get more comfortable and you get better, and we got a lot better. We ended up winning the whole thing."
They did, in stunning fashion, reaching the Final Four of the European Championships with what a Haaretz newspaper reporter called "one of the more underwhelming editions the club has ever put on display," before rallying from six points down with 1:30 left against favored CSKA Moscow in the Euroleague semifinal, and avenging two earlier losses to Real Madrid with an overtime win in the Euroleague final.
Naturally, it's presumptuous to predict the same sort of finish for Blatt's Cavaliers; while they have now peeked back above .500 (23-20), they are still seeded fifth in the East and wouldn't qualify for the playoffs in the West. They are still a single, short losing streak from many of the media's questions coming back, from the professional (Blatt's adjustment to the longer NBA games and tighter NBA schedule) to the personal (his connection with LeBron James and other players, in a league where the players, not coaches, hold the hammer).
But at least there are signs of turning the corner after a tumultuous start, signs that history has a chance to repeat itself once more, and perhaps Blatt warrants more time prior to any definitive assessments about his ability to adapt, progress and ultimately lead.
Several times during the Cavaliers' struggles, Blatt has publicly referenced his teams' tendency to start slow, and recently, specifically alluded to that final season in Maccabi.
Following Friday's shootaround, Bleacher Report sat down with him to fill in some of the specifics of those slow starts.
"I've always felt that, OK, you don't ever lose on purpose, but the really successful teams are the ones that grow and at the end are at their best," Blatt said. "If you come out and you are great right away in the beginning, that doesn't necessarily guarantee you success on down the line. Now don't misunderstand me. I'm not saying that you purposely hold your team back. But sometimes you don't spend all your ammunition in the beginning as opposed to slowly building and growing, and hopefully reaching your potential at the end of the road, more so than at the beginning of the road."
He noted that his previous teams "have done things very, very different from other teams," which has often required more work and time to get right.
"I don't think that's the case here," Blatt said. "I don't think that we've really tried to overwhelm our own guys with a whole lot of different things, because of our situation. We've had so many changes within the team we really haven't been able to do that. And by no means are we out of the woods yet. But I just think we're finally kind of coming together as a unit, because we have a unit. We've got LeBron back healthy."
James said Friday that, after his layoff, he feels much better on the court, with greater quickness and explosiveness, which is showing in his statistics.
"We've got J.R. sort of into the team..." Blatt continued. "And we've incorporated Timo. And we're getting healthy with other guys. And I really think that's the main thing here right now. Just kind of getting our whole unit together and healthy and on the same page."
Several NBA scouts have seen the Cavaliers scaling back their offense some from what they had shown in the preseason, while also noting that the players don't always run the called sets to completion. Ingles said that one of the reasons he liked playing for Blatt is because the coach "lets you read the game and play. Obviously, he knew there were going to be mistakes involved. That's just a part of basketball. He put his sets into it, but at the end of the day, guys are on the court and just have to be able to make reads. We had smart guys, and he just let us play." Ingles said that he sees the Cavaliers running a few similar sets to Maccabi, "but the game is so different, it's kind of hard to run the same stuff."
But does Blatt anticipate adding elements as the season progresses, with 39 games left prior to the playoffs?
"Yes, I do," he said. "I do. Because the confidence is there. And just sort of the intimacy between the players is there, in terms of them knowing each other and trusting each other and trusting the coaching staff. But there's a fine line. Sometimes less is more for certain teams. I truly believe that. Sometimes more is necessary, because maybe you have to hide things. And we're kind of working through that piece of what's best for this particular team."
As he did last season.
"There are similarities," Blatt said. "A lot of similarities from this year and last year, honestly. Except that we didn't have LeBron James on our team last year. That's a small difference. We didn't have the best player in the world on our team last year."
They weren't facing the likes of Stephen Curry, John Wall, Kevin Durant and Marc Gasol on a regular basis, either, but the point is understood. Still, if James is at peak level—physically and spiritually—that's an inherent advantage for Blatt over everyone.
"We ended up last year, having all that success, really with a relatively modest roster," Blatt said. "Although we had a few guys who really stepped up in the end, like Tyrese Rice, and sort of became stars. But we didn't have a star in any way, shape or form to compare to LeBron."
He believed his final Maccabi team started to click in late December and the results show it—it won 17 straight games between Dec. 5 and Jan. 27.
"We finally got everybody in-house and on the same page," Blatt said. "But remember, in that environment, I had six weeks of training camp before the start of the season. And you're playing two times a week, maximum three times, but never more. Generally two times per week, and you've got a lot of practice time."
Blatt won't get that here. Not with four, sometimes five, games per week, and expected off days following back-to-backs. It's been one of the many adjustments he's needed to make, all while living overseas from his family.
"I think, and I live by this adage, there's always something to learn, and in a lot of cases, a great deal to learn," Blatt said. "John Wooden said, 'It's what you learn after you already know everything that counts.' And I really believe in that age-old adage. I truly do. There's a lot for me to learn in the NBA. The NBA game is different. It's different."
On the court. And off.
"Both," Blatt said. "It's everything. It's the game. It's the personalities. It's the off-the-court business. There's just a lot more things that come into play here."
There will surely be stumbles ahead, adversity to overcome. He knows this from many of his experiences, including the most recent. After Maccabi recovered from its slow start last season, it lost four straight in late March prior to going on its unlikely mid-May championship run.
What does he want to see from this Cleveland team, as winter turns to spring and—in the best-case scenario—summer?
"Really, what I want us to do is be competitors of the highest order," Blatt said. "We have talent, and we have skill. But we've got to be that team that just gets out there and just competes with you at the highest level every day. All the other stuff is technical stuff that will come. We've got our defense a little bit more in line, and we're moving the ball pretty good. I'd love to say, 'Hey, let's make more shots.' Because I think we're getting a lot of good shots and we're not making them, but I believe that will come around. We've just got to be a team that takes pride in competing, because we've got enough."
That faith in the future comes from knowing his past.
Ethan Skolnick covers the NBA for Bleacher Report. Follow him on Twitter at@EthanJSkolnick.
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