Early on in the season the Cleveland Cavaliers struggled. It should have been expected since LeBron James came back and they traded for Kevin Love, of course it would take some time for the new teammates to gel. Instead there were numerous reports that David Blatt may have been a bad choice as head coach. The Cavaliers have since turned things around and hold the No. 2 seed in the Eastern Conference. Now there’s a report that Blatt isn’t calling the plays, it’s King James, and shockingly both parties confirmed the news.
According to Brian Windhorst of ESPN.com:
“The Princeton offense that David Blatt installed in the preseason, they just threw that out. What typically happens—and this has been happening for like three months now—is LeBron will take the ball, and LeBron will call the play. David Blatt will see what play LeBron calls, and he will repeat it to the team. That happens on a regular basis.”
David Blatt, via David McMenamin of ESPN:
“I don’t think that’s peculiar,” Blatt said after Cavs practice Wednesday. “When the game is going on and you are in the heat of the battle at times, you can’t get a message through or you don’t want to stop the flow, so a guy may [call the play on his own].
“We have sets that we know what we’re going to use going in. You know, we have a package that we’re going to use going in and at times, according to the flow of the game, somebody may call out a play. I don’t think that’s unusual.”
LeBron James, via McMenamin:
“Well, we have a package,” James said. “If I see something, I have the right to call plays. Kyrie does as well. We kind of do that play calling. Coach Blatt does the play calling obviously throughout the game in timeouts, but it’s great to be able to have some type of freedom out there with Kyrie to be able to call sets that we feel best suit our team.”
Obviously it’s not a problem now as the Cavaliers are playing much better and rank third in points per possession, behind only the Clippers and Warriors. If Blatt is not completely comfortable however and he really loses control of the team then it can become a problem. Right now they seem in sync; also funny both James and Blatt used the word “package”.
