What's the Breaking Point for Cleveland Cavaliers and David Blatt?
David Blatt and the Cleveland Cavaliers are not who they're supposed to be.
LeBron James, Kevin Love and Kyrie Irving have not meshed as planned. Losers of their last six contests, the Cavaliers are now below .500, at 19-20, on pace to finish sixth in an Eastern Conference once considered theirs for the taking.
Indeed, purported discord and dissension have supplanted title aspirations.
Now, with the Cavaliers' championship chase fast fading, it's come to this: wondering whether this team will reach a breaking point with its most frequent scapegoat, David Blatt—if it hasn't already.
Murphy's Law
Nothing has gone according to plan in Cleveland. The Cavaliers are not runaway Eastern Conference favorites or NBA Finals-bound darlings. They are a feared force in theory, not practice.
Anything that can go wrong is going wrong. From injuries to closed-door drama to open-door distractions, the Cavaliers are drudging through scores of issues, each one bringing them closer to reaching a breaking point beyond mend.
This team is failing on the most fundamental levels, beginning with chemistry and deference.
Support for rookie head coach David Blatt has been tepid—if not nonexistent—outside the front office. Asked to give the sideline-stalker a ringing endorsement just weeks ago, James could muster only evasive sass with the intention of trivializing the question more than providing an answer, per the Northeast Oho Media Group's Joe Vardon:
If the warning signs stopped there, the Cavaliers wouldn't seem so destructive now. General manager David Griffin offered his unmistakable support of Blatt, telling ESPN.com's Dave McMenamin the coach's job security was a "non-story."
But the notional red flags haven't stopped there. They're growing in number.
On the heels of Cleveland's Tuesday night loss to the Phoenix Suns—James' first contest back after an eight-game stay on the sidelines—ESPN.com's Brian Windhorst asserted that the relationship between players and coach is rapidly deteriorating:
"It isn't just the casinos that are agape at how this is playing out -- the Cavs were 4-15 in their past 19 games against the spread coming in to Tuesday -- so are league scouts, executives and rival players.
They see players appearing to run different plays than the bench calls, see assistant coach Tyronn Lue calling timeouts literally behind Blatt's back during games, and hear Cavs players openly talking about coaching issues with opposing players and personnel. Not once, not twice, but frequently over the past several months.
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There's long been a sense that Blatt would struggle in Cleveland. An autonomous offensive mastermind, he came over from Europe expecting to grab the reins of a rebuilding franchise headlined by Irving and Dion Waiters. Then, quite suddenly, he found himself overseeing not just a hastily built championship contender but a title favorite.
At that point, this was hardly an issue. The Cavaliers had so much talent in James, Love and Irving; the idea of Blatt not succeeding to some extent became blasphemous. He is of the Gregg Popovich, Mike Budenholzer and Steve Kerr ilk: floor-spacing and ball and player movement all game, every game.
Like everything else, though, Blatt's systemized wonder hasn't lived up to expectations. The Cavaliers are neither fast nor historically potent. They rank a drab 11th in points scored per 100 possessions, a lowly 25th in pace and a middling 12th in passes per game.
Injuries and player turnover haven't helped. Anderson Varejao is done for the season, and James has missed a career-high nine games (Cleveland is 1-8 in those contests).
Blatt also inherited a roster of ball-dominant No. 1 options, from Irving and Waiters to Love and James. Individually, they fit his positionless offensive mold—especially the remaining three. Together, they're a jumbled mess of talent that suggests there are too many mouths to feed, too many egos to pacify.
Love, a superstar, has already been benched for entire fourth quarters. That's plural. He's often removed from the offense, playing the part of a more touted Steve Novak, orbiting the perimeter, waiting for spot-up opportunities.
Were it not for his injury-riddled, 18-game letdown in 2012-13, Love's 43.6 percent shooting would be the worst of his career. This, while seeing his usage rate plunge by 6.4 percentage points from last season.
Midseason acquisitions—like those of J.R. Smith and Iman Shumpert—address the lack of spot-up shooting and offensive variance, but they're also another hurdle the Cavaliers must clear. Blatt is now coaching a vastly different team; this is the third version of the Cavaliers he's been tasked with managing.
All this in addition to a turnstile defense. Cleveland is 26th in points allowed per 100 possessions and 29th in rim protection, hence the trade for Timofey Mozgov.
And hence why the masked mutiny against Blatt is so believable: The Cavaliers are failing.
Defense has long been the Cavaliers' self-admitted pitfall. Offense should be their bread and butter, if nothing else. Whether their ball-sticking, underwhelming attack is on Blatt's inexperience, the roster's fluidity, the team's zombie zeal or some combination of everything matters little. Their fall from grace, after being placed upon a perch, has been obvious. That's what matters.
As does James' purported indifference to the situation.
From Yahoo Sports' Adrian Wojnarowski:
"For all the leveraging of the Ohio homecoming into marketing and commercials, few surrounding these Cavaliers sensed James had intimately invested himself into the process of constructing a championship culture. When the Cavaliers needed his old MVP self – hard-playing, smart and relentless – they found him taking off plays and jogging back on defense and undermining his coach in ways big and small. James hadn't offered the leadership he promised to reconstruct the franchise, only his presence.
For everyone suspicious of James' intentions when he pushed David Blatt out of a confrontation with a game official in Tuesday night's loss to the Phoenix Suns, give James a benefit of the doubt he hasn't earned. He was trying to spare Blatt a technical foul.
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Accurate or fabricated, the Cavaliers' dirty laundry is now being aired in front of everyone.
These allegations are serious, perhaps even exaggerated or insincere. But, worse than anything, they also seem credible—par for the Cavaliers' current course.
What's in a Breaking Point?
More losing will push the Cavaliers to make some sort of decision. If they start free-falling to the extent of sniffing the lottery, action will come swiftly, without regard for further patience.
It's safe to bet any and all potential action will include—if not solely consist of—Blatt's dismissal. The Cavaliers aren't going to push James out the door, and while trading Love or Irving would allow the team to turn one asset into many (superior role players), it's much easier to replace coaches than superstars.
But Blatt's departure doesn't seem imminent. Though owner Dan Gilbert is notoriously brash, canning Blatt is hypocritical.
James preached patience and process in his return essay for Sports Illustrated. Making another change halfway into an inaugural season would be impulsive. Windhorst makes it pretty clear the chopping block doesn't yet extend to Blatt.
The players have to be held somewhat accountable, after all. If effort is being withheld, as Windhorst alluded to, that's not entirely Blatt's doing. Lackluster performances aren't totally his fault, either.
Love has been the one most often associated with Blatt's insufficient performance, even though he hasn't publicly complained. And yet for all the talk about Blatt failing him, Love is hardly being marginalized.
Lower usage rates are a side effect of better teammates. James and Irving are primary playmakers; the ball is going to be in their hands more than Love's.
Around 41 percent of his shot attempts are also coming within the paint and restricted area. That's nearly identical to last season's 42 percent. Love is merely burying those same attempts at a lower clip (48.6 percent, down from 56.2) while taking fewer shots overall.
When there isn't one symptom ruining the situation, it's difficult to render this complicated marriage a wash already. Blatt's departure may indeed be in the cards if the Cavaliers continue their plunge. But given all the drama and dysfunction and changes, they need to see more, for better or worse, before making that call.
Bent, Not Broken...Yet
Heads normally start to roll when experiments run this far astray. The freshness of this dynamic has helped keep calls for axes at bay, but as evidenced by the mounting speculation, the Cavaliers are nearing their breaking point.
In no uncertain terms should the Cavaliers be here, navigating these theatrics. They have enough talent on the roster to compete, and their sixth-place hole is on everyone.
Blatt shouldn't be forced to bench Love, who is killing the team's already bottom-feeding defense. James' attempt to prevent his rookie head coach from receiving a technical foul shouldn't incite a conjecture craze among fans and pundits.
Nonetheless, here the Cavaliers are, fending off a breaking point that can only be prevented by finally living up to the lofty standards set for them. As Yahoo Sports' Dan Devine writes:
"If Cleveland can begin to right the ship and rack up some wins with James back in the fold, stuff like this will all fade to the far recesses of our minds, like the Spo bump in the aftermath of four straight Finals trips and two NBA championships. If the Cavs continue to flail, though, every little thing — every jolt, shove and bristle — will keep generating headlines and headshakes. And after yet another loss on Tuesday, the rain will keep falling for at least one more day.
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Time remains on the Cavaliers' side. They play in a forgiving Eastern Conference that diminishes the downside of them missing out on home-court advantage for the playoffs. They are 6-5 against the East's other top six teams and were 6-2 through Dec. 15, just before the latest tumult began.
Time, though, is also winding down. The Cavaliers have burned through most of their goodwill and must now gain ground with James back and the roster rounded out.
If they don't, that's when somebody gets sacrificed, be it later this season or at campaign's end. And as the untested head coach, Blatt is in line to pay for any failure with his job—not because he's most culpable for Cleveland's unrest, but because, above all else, it's easier to believe he's failed his players more than they've failed him.
*Stats courtesy of Basketball-Reference and NBA.com unless otherwise cited and are accurate as of games played Jan. 14, 2015.
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