Long time coming: End comes for David Blatt's bumpy Cavs tenure

— -- Running his hands over his hair to smooth it back into place, David Blatt emerged from the visitors locker room at the United Center with a bit of a dour look on his face.

It was Nov. 1, 2014, only his second game as an NBA head coach, but what he was about to say was the first crack in the foundation that would lead to one of the more stunning firings in NBA history nearly 15 months later.

That night, the Cleveland Cavaliers had defeated the Chicago Bulls for their first win of the season and the first for Blatt as an NBA coach. The players waited for him in the locker room and when he emerged from his office they mobbed him, mussing his hair and yelling. They presented him with the game ball. Blatt accepted it with a smile, but he was also annoyed.

"Not all of you know me that well," Blatt told the media, "but I've probably won over 700 games in my career."

Image and perception of a rookie coach

At the very heart of the matter, this is why the Cavs fired Blatt on Friday, despite a record of 83-40 and a Finals appearance. Blatt viewed himself as a coach with numerous championships in Europe, an Olympic medal and 20-plus years on the sidelines, a career that made him one of the most experienced coaches in the world.

The Cavs players, especially the veterans, saw him as a rookie. "That's his first NBA win," Kyrie Irving said after the game. "He deserves the game ball. It's his first time in the NBA. I call him the virgin of the NBA."

Both Blatt and his players, specifically LeBron James, made concessions to deal with this chasm of perception. Such courtesies probably would have continued through this season, too, as James made a glaring attempt to publicly support Blatt.

But the fissure between Blatt and the players was irreparable and had been for some time, a reality general manager David Griffin finally accepted when he executed Blatt's dismissal despite the Cavs' 30-11 record and Blatt's likely berth as All-Star coach.

The issues started before James even returned to the franchise in July 2014. The Cavs were all over the place in their coaching search that summer, offering the job to numerous big names from John Calipari to Bill Self in the college ranks, and Steve Kerr from the broadcast booth. Griffin also interviewed Alvin Gentry, who he had worked alongside with the Phoenix Suns, and Tyronn Lue, a rising assistant who learned under Doc Rivers.

But team owner Dan Gilbert wanted to make a different kind of hire. He didn't want a retread or an inexperienced coach, which is why he chased the veteran college coaches. And it's why he loved Blatt, who was a legend in Israel, something that appealed to Gilbert.

When James turned his attention to free agency after losing in the Finals with the Miami Heat, James' representatives were surprised the Cavs had hired Blatt and had not waited to see if James would have input. They were also surprised that despite wanting James to return, the Cavs didn't have enough cap space available to offer James a maximum contract.

From the Cavs' perspective, they had no clue James was serious about returning and had to conduct business. More proof of that happened in early July when Gilbert sent his jet to get free agent small forward Gordon Hayward, who the Cavs were seriously considering making a huge offer to before even speaking to James.

No welcome wagon from the King

After James signed, he showed no interest in meeting Blatt. Weeks passed before James took a brief break from filming a movie in New York to have a face-to-face conversation with his new coach. It was clear James' respect for Blatt was limited, but it also soon became clear that Blatt assumed respect would be coming his way.

This set the stage of a traumatic tenure for Blatt. In fairness, this was not the team he'd be hired to coach as James had signed and the young player he was primarily hired to develop, Andrew Wiggins, was traded to acquire Kevin Love.

"David was hired to coach a developmental team and young players who would've wanted to please him," said one team source. "He ended up coaching a finished product where the players expected him to please them."

To complicate matters, the Cavs hired the runner-up for the job, Lue, to be Blatt's assistant. To get him away from the Clippers, the Cavs paid him a record four-year, $6.5 million deal for an assistant. Gilbert would later call the coaching staff the best he'd assembled in his time as owner.

Blatt endorsed the move, which many in the league saw as an immediate undercutting of the head coach. Never before could anyone remember the runner-up for a job being hired as the lead assistant, an example of Blatt's NBA inexperience. Blatt also didn't understand how he'd have to earn players' respect, that it would not be instantly given.

"I've been a head coach for 22 years. People overlook that too easily and I think unfairly," Blatt said last season. "I am not now, nor have I have been for quite some time, a rookie coach."

Within days of the start of last season, James began expressing doubt that Blatt would work out as the Cavs long-term answer. It was crystalized during a road trip to the West Coast in the second week of the season when James and Irving began a bit of a tug-of-war over control of the offense. Blatt seemed powerless to control it and, if he tried, it didn't work.

Shortly thereafter, James changed his role in the Cavs' offense and began playing point guard while moving Irving off the ball. In conjunction with the move, the Cavs naturally started moving away from Blatt's Princeton sets that he'd installed during the preseason. James nonchalantly told the media he didn't consult Blatt on the changes.

"No, I can do it on my own," James said. "I'm past those days where I have to ask."

King's connection to Lue

From that moment forward, it was clear James gave little more than lip service to Blatt. As the days passed, he seemed to connect more and more with Lue. For years, James had admired Lue's former boss, Rivers, and it helped establish a connection. James had grumbled at times over the years about not playing for a former NBA player since his first season and a half when Paul Silas coached the Cavs. In the time since Silas, James played for Mike Brown, Erik Spoelstra and Blatt.

James played against Lue, who used to enjoy great success against James' teams as a point guard for several teams. For a while, media who covered the Cavs referred to Lue as "Killa," which was short for "Cavs killer."

"It was like an 800-pound gorilla as the season moved on," said one person involved with the team. "You could just see LeBron connecting to [Lue] and turning his back on David."

It didn't stay a secret. James and other players' complaints about Blatt's style started getting out fast. Cavs players complained about the coach to opposing players during games. Once, while on the road, an injured Cavs player used the home team's therapy pool and complained about Blatt, the thoughts literally echoing throughout the home locker room.

At one point during the challenging stretch, media members went looking for an endorsement for Blatt from James.

"Listen, man, I don't pay no bills around here," was James' response, though he said the players and coaches were getting to know each other and Blatt still had the team's attention.

By late December 2014 with the team hovering around .500, the Cavs realized they were at a crossroads. Griffin made it clear he thought the struggles were partially his fault because he didn't provide Blatt enough of a bench. And after trade talks over the course of several weeks, he was ready to execute some deals to try to solve it. But would Blatt be retained?

The issues with Blatt and the players, James especially, were clear. James, dealing with strains in his back and his knee, needed to take a few weeks off and deal with the issues. The team knew it would struggle with James out and the pressure would mount. The Cavs had to decide whether they had to address the problem or support the coach. Stories started to appear in the media about Blatt's job status. Several days passed. Gilbert and Griffin debated the issue internally. Finally, they make a decision.

"No change is being made, period. It's such a ridiculous assertion," Griffin said in an unusual pregame media session.

These comments were meant to get the media to back off Blatt, but they were clearly aimed at the players as well, making sure the franchise gave a strong vote of confidence for their coach. Griffin then executed trades to bring in Iman Shumpert, J.R. Smith, and Timofey Mozgov to the team. James returned from his absence and looked vastly healthier as the Cavs went from 19-20 at the midway point of the season to one of the NBA's most dominant teams.

A truce developed. Blatt backed off and gave James space and James took it, whether it was calling plays, deciding when he entered the game and when he exited, and even strategies. James stopped taking digs at Blatt in the media, and the complaints to opposing players stopped.

Not the same coach

Those who knew Blatt from Europe, where he was known as a fire-breather with players during games, were stunned at how he'd changed. When Blatt was the coach of the Russian national team, he famously once kicked two of his best players off the bench because they were talking over him in a timeout. Now, they watched in awe as players barked at Blatt in timeouts. It was just one of many adjustments he made to try to make this unwieldy job work.

Blatt, meanwhile, retrofitted the Cavs' defensive system with his new players and it helped launch the team's midseason turnaround. He melded in the new players effectively. In this way, Blatt did show his experience as he found a way to give James space but look for other ways he could make a positive difference. At the same time, though, his yielding to the players, and James especially, only further reinforced that Blatt wasn't a coach who demanded respect.

The respect issue presented itself in the playoffs. With the Cavs playing a vital game in Chicago in the second round, James made perhaps the biggest undercutting of his coach of the entire season. James changed the final play of Game 4, which resulted in James hitting a game-winning 3-pointer that evened the series at 2-2 and effectively propelled the Cavs to the Finals. Blatt initially wanted James to inbound the ball, James wanted the shot.

Star players consulting on a final play happens routinely. But the way James explained what happened made his continuing viewpoint of Blatt very transparent.

"To be honest, the play that was drawn up, I scratched it," James said.

That was after Blatt nearly cost the Cavs a chance at the shot when he called a timeout he didn't have and official Scott Foster saved him by not granting the timeout, which would've resulted in a technical. The resulting effect, even at a pinnacle moment in the season, put Blatt in the spotlight for the wrong reasons.

Timeouts had been an issue as Blatt mismanaged them early in the season and sometimes would turn to Lue about when to execute certain timeouts. Teams can take advantage of certain mandatory timeouts and conserve options, something with which Blatt had issues. When he tried to explain what happened, he made the situation worse.

"A basketball coach makes 150 to 200 critical decisions during the course of a game, something that I think is paralleled only by a fighter pilot," Blatt said.

Yet even some of the simplest tasks -- like staying on message about the injury status of Anderson Varejao in the days leading up to the Finals -- he failed at executing. Varejao, out since December because of an Achilles tear, had hopes of returning to the court in the championship round. The team decided against it. Rather than give a straight answer about the center's availability in the Finals, Blatt hinted he could play, saying, "Stranger things have happened in this world." When a team source was later informed of Blatt's quote about Varejao, he responded incredulously with, "What the f--- is he doing?!"

It was a turbulent season. By the end, however, Blatt had won over some critics for his managing of injuries during the postseason as the Cavs put a scare into the Golden State Warriors in the Finals despite missing Love and Irving.

The second season

When the Cavs entered the 2015-16 season, both Blatt and James were determined to have a new outlook. Blatt said he wouldn't look to engage as much as his first season, and admitted there was more of a learning curve that he'd anticipated. James, after repeatedly blistering Blatt with commentary and overt on-court actions, decided he would attempt to support him as much as possible. Also most everyone on the roster was happy in new, more lucrative contracts. Everyone had decided they wanted to be there.

In a key moment after back-to-back losses in early November, James was perhaps as supportive of Blatt as he'd ever been publicly.

"He does his job as great as any coach can do in this league," James said. "It's up to us to go out and produce."

That was the strongest quote among others along those lines, and it seemed as if Year 2 with Blatt would be much smoother. The Cavs were performing reasonably well on the court. Despite a bad preseason with Irving, Love, Mozgov and Shumpert still recovering from injuries, and James recovering from an anti-inflammatory injection in his back, the Cavs got off to a strong 8-1 start.

But in truth, little had changed from the previous season other than the rancor not spilling over publically. James still made many decisions without consulting Blatt (once he took himself out of a game without saying anything and received a technical foul). It was clear the players still connected better with Lue both during practices and games.

Much of the early season was spent plugging holes as Blatt managed a roster that was the banged up into early December. But just when everyone got healthy, things suddenly took a turn.

On Christmas Day, the Cavs made a much-anticipated visit to Golden State for a premier game on the NBA schedule. With a fully healthy roster, Blatt coached as if it were a playoff game and he slashed his rotation. Richard Jefferson didn't play for the first time all season. Mo Williams and James Jones saw their minutes reduced. Roles were changed on the fly. Certainly Blatt had to make some tough choices with the healthy roster but all of them came as surprises to the players and it triggered a cascade of anger and frustration.

Trouble grows on the road

While it might have seemed minor to offend back-end rotation players, it ripped open some wounds from the previous season about the lack of respect for Blatt that existed within the team. Privately, the players cursed Blatt and their agents started heavily complaining behind the scenes. Whatever goodwill had been fostered seemed to be blowing up.

The next night at a game in Portland, the Cavs put forth an embarrassing effort in a blowout loss to the Trail Blazers. They gave almost no effort and were out of the game from the start. Calling it a boycott game might be too strong, but there was a noticeable chill that enveloped the team.

James tried to stick to his edict of not attacking Blatt in the media, following the Cavs' next game, a win in Phoenix. The Suns were going through their own turmoil with one star suspended ( Markieff Morris) and another star out for the season because of impending surgery ( Eric Bledsoe), not to mention Jeff Hornacek having two of his coaches fired from his staff by ownership. Rather than pummel the Suns, the Cavs barely pulled out the win with James visibly frustrated all night. He was terse in his postgame comments, unlike his usual engaging self.

The next night, the Cavs won in Denver, with James enjoying a turn-back-the-clock performance with family and friends in attendance on the eve of his 31st birthday. Overall, it was a sloppy game against a middling team, but it was a win. He was asked about his bizarre behavior in Phoenix -- both his demeanor on the court and his postgame remarks -- after most of the locker room had cleared out at the Pepsi Center: "Thank God we play in the NBA with a game the next day and not the NFL because if it was the NFL, I would have went off and let the quotes fester for a week."

Watching all of it was Griffin, who was on the trip with the team. The veteran Jones came to the GM at one point and told him, "I wouldn't want to be you," according to a source. Jones said it because he knew Griffin was dealing with the beginnings of an uprising. But the Cavs were still in first place.

The team finished out the trip salvaging a 2-2 record, but there was no ignoring the growing issues. After the players had two days off to celebrate the new year, they gathered for a practice back in Cleveland.

Griffin sat in on a film session and jumped on James for not getting back on defense against the Nuggets, one of his bad habits. James accepted the criticism in stride, sources said. But this moment only inspired less faith in Blatt, because it is supposed to be the coach holding the players accountable, not the GM.

Within days, both Williams and Smith showed up late for games, arriving less than hour before tipoff. Blatt said it was dealt with internally. Some around the team expressed surprise multiple players were doing it and thought of it as another example of a lack of accountability.

LeBron maintains public support

Still, James supported Blatt when given the chance. A couple of days before the Cavs played a key game in San Antonio last week he offered positive comments.

"I think every game is another learning experience for Coach Blatt," James said. "There's coaches with more tenure in our league, obviously, and there's guys with a better résumé than he has. But one thing he tries to do is just put us in a position to win and then it's up to us."

The Cavs then lost to the Spurs. Then, in the most important home game of the season, on Martin Luther King Jr. Day against the Warriors, the Cavs were flattened by the defending champs' unrelenting attack.

Playing expertly, Golden State destroyed Cleveland by 34 points, leading by 43 points at one point. Gilbert sat next to the Cavs' bench until the bitter end. James spent much of the fourth quarter sitting in Blatt's seat on the bench, talking with Lue as Blatt stood a few feet away.

"That's my responsibility to get them ready and our guys have got to be better than that, and they know that," Blatt said, accepting blame for the loss.

After the game, James took care not to take aim at Blatt and rebuffed a reporter when he tried to get James to pile on to Blatt's comments.

Meanwhile, Love had played poorly since Irving's return to the lineup and he was not included in the game plan effectively against the Spurs or Warriors. In the next two games, a win in Brooklyn and a quality home win over the Los Angeles Clippers, Love piled up 35 points and 34 rebounds. Asked to explain the change, Love credited Irving, and not Blatt, with making a strategy suggestion.

Meanwhile, Blatt chided the media for not giving the team enough credit for being 30-11 despite the 0-3 record to the Spurs and Warriors.

"I hear a lot of far-reaching conclusions, and personally I don't like it," Blatt said. "I think this team is in pretty good position, although people choose to overlook that, which I don't think is fair."