Why David Blatt deserves credit for Cleveland Cavaliers success

David Blatt is two game away from winning the NBA Finals with the Cleveland Cavaliers, and he deserves way more credit than he’s getting. 

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LeBron James is unlike any player in the history of the NBA.  David Blatt is a great NBA head coach.

Those are two seemingly unrelated assertions that actually go together better than you’d think.

David Blatt is not just a hapless observer on the sideline but a driving force for the Cleveland Cavaliers as they aim for their first championship in franchise history.

After Thursday night’s blowout home loss in Game 4 of the NBA Finals, the Cleveland Cavaliers are tied 2-2 in LeBron James’ second try to win Cleveland its first basketball championship, and first professional championship since 1964.

LeBron and the Cavs infamously made the NBA Finals in 2007 and subsequently were swept 4-0 by the San Antonio Spurs. Mike Brown was the head coach of that Cleveland team, making him the most successful Cavaliers coaches of all-time.

Brown was eventually fired by the Cavaliers, proving that making the NBA Finals isn’t something that can save your job. He was brought back eventually for a second go-around, but Blatt is in Cleveland for a reason. The question is, should we consider LeBron James the reason Mike Brown isn’t in Cleveland anymore.

Blatt had no idea that LeBron James was coming back to Cleveland when he was hired. He wasn’t completely out of the loop though, as he told Grantland’s Zach Lowe last July, that there was a chance LeBron could come home.

Good thing he did too, as without LeBron, Blatt’s first season in the NBA certainly would not have led to the NBA Finals.

Then again, without James, Blatt would not have been expected to lead a team to the Finals in his first season. Coaching James is a bit of a catch-22—just ask Erik Spoelstra, the Miami Heat head coach who had a nearly identical experience as Blatt his first season coaching LeBron.

For Spoelstra, it was his second full season as the head man in Miami, but also his first NBA job. In just his second year, it was suddenly ‘championship or bust’. Similarly, it took a while for LeBron to trust his new head coach in Miami.

That process has seemingly been sped up in Cleveland this year. Sure there were some moments throughout the season where the two didn’t seem to be on the same page. But many of those instances were the natural result of playing a super-competitive sport with unfair expectations to win a championship in the first year a team is assembled.

Great teams like San Antonio aren’t built in a day, or a year. They’re built over many years of roster development, personnel growth, and coaching smarts taking effect. It takes continuity, players learning to play together, learning the schemes and adjusting those schemes as needed.

To understand David Blatt, we must go back in time to take the journey with him from his days at Princeton University to his years coaching in Europe.

It is well-known Blatt was a coach in Europe for two decades. What is probably not known about him is the fact he played in Europe for a decade as well. And it may not be known he coached not only in Israel but also in Italy, Greece and Turkey as well as in Russia. He even won the Bronze medal in the 2012 Summer Olympics in London as head coach of Team Russia.

In other words, he’s coached a lot of different places. He’s coached the most talented teams in Europe and the least. But everywhere he’s been he’s won. He’s won a lot.

Consider how many championships he won in Europe—not even mentioning his many coach of the year titles:

• Israeli League champion in 2002, 2003, 2011, 2012 and 2014
• Israeli Cup champion in 2002, 2003, 2011, 2012, 2013 and 2014
• Italian League champion in 2006; Italian Cup champion in 2007
• Adriatic League champion in 2012
• FIBA EuroChallenge champion in 2005
• Euroleague champion in 2014.

In the words of DJ Khaled, all Daivd Blatt does is win, win, win.

Blatt has continued that winning in Cleveland, with a ragtag bunch of players like J.R. Smith and Iman Shumpert coupled with superstar powers in LeBron James and Kyrie Irving.

Let’s get down to the nitty gritty for a moment. For their careers, none were premium players before joining the Cavaliers, using the best advanced metric we have for value: Win Shares.

If all three had played the entire year with the Cavaliers, they would have easily surpassed career highs in Win Shares. In other words, Blatt has gotten the best production out of each of the three players in their entire NBA career.

Though he was speaking to Lowe about the now departed Dion Waiters, Blatt explained another key part of his coaching philosophy last July, saying basically that a player is only as good as the coach who guides him.

He’s done that with Smith, Shumpert and Mozgov—three players who were assumed to be superfluous parts and not core parts of a winning team. He’s done the same with another supposed career journeyman: Matthew Dellavedova.

Despite playing in only 67 games, and starting just 13, Dellavedova recorded 1.9 win shares this past season. That number is down slightly from the 2.1 he registered as a rookie, but in five fewer games played.

In truth, the numbers don’t do justice to the impact Dellavedova has had on the Cavaliers in these playoffs. His 0.4 win shares places him below every Cavs regular, yet it’s hard to imagine Cleveland winning Game 3 without his 20 points and huge hustle plays at the end of the game, including the incredible And-one he had near the end of the contest when the Warriors were making a fierce closing surge.

Blatt deserves credit for the performance of all four—if for no other reason than he has created an atmosphere in Cleveland where players play their best, as is true of all good coaches. Not all of his decisions are met with praise, in fact it’s usually the exact opposite.

After Thursday night’s disheartening 103-82 loss at Quicken Loans Arena, Blatt admitted in his postgame press conference his team was tired. Then early Friday, reports surfaced that a number of the Cavaliers’ veterans—including LeBron James—are in favor of using the bench more liberally for the remainder of the NBA Finals, however long they should go.

Given the fact Blatt used but seven players in the Game 4 loss, no one should be shocked his personnel usage would be questioned. What is a bit surprising is the fact these reports seemed to come from within—something Blatt and his staff have managed to quell for the majority of the playoffs after having it be such a problem during the regular season.

Then again the reasoning behind it is solid, and the reports of his own team calling for it may be more innocent than some of the rumblings from earlier on in the year. In fact, it may be the Cavaliers know their coach well enough now to understand he listens.

He wants to hear from his players and staff, and by all accounts takes their recommendations seriously. He was criticized for this in late March when reports came out LeBron James was calling the Cavaliers’ offensive plays. LeBron has since come to his defense and it makes you wonder why this was a big deal.

It goes back to the main premise: Blatt understands his players—their strengths—and plays to them. LeBron James is known for possessing one of the sharpest basketball IQs in the history of basketball.

Blatt would be arrogant and stubborn if he insisted on calling every single play, every single time down the court.

Put it this way: No one ever criticized Tony Dungy or Tom Moore in Indianapolis or any of the Denver Broncos’ offensive coordinators for allowing Peyton Manning to call plays at the line of scrimmage. Why should Blatt be criticized for ceding some control to an equally intelligent athlete?

It may seem this is more of a defense for Blatt, and it probably is indeed. Blatt needs no defense, he is after all coaching his team in the NBA Finals. But apparently there are still some out there who believe the Cavaliers are winning in spite of their first-year coach.

And it isn’t true.

Greg Swartz of Bleacher Report does an excellent job describing the kind of adjustments Blatt made in the Eastern Conference Semi-Finals against the Chicago Bulls.

"The rotation went nine deep even without (Kevin) Love or (J.R.) Smith. The Cavaliers looked more comfortable in general, thanks in large part to Blatt’s lineup adjustments."

Lineup adjustments — he’s been doing it all season, especially during the postseason.

Blatt will likely have to do it again to keep Cleveland competitive in what is now a best-of-three series. A series which could bring Cleveland its first ever NBA championship, and first professional sports championship since 1964.

Blatt and his coaching pedigree, system, teaching and adjustments are a large reason the Cavs are still in position to do it. And he’ll be more than a small reason should they improbably pull it off.