It’s been one of the red-meat notions of the 2015 NBA season: LeBron James is the real head coach of the Cleveland Cavaliers.
NBA Twitter and the NBA blogosphere lit up when the story emerged in early April that LeBron signaled the plays on the floor for the Cavs, and head coach David Blatt repeated those signals. It was so easy to bury Blatt — not necessarily because this was his first NBA rodeo as a head coach after working overseas, but because he had thrown Kevin Love under the bus earlier in the year and had utterly failed to get the team moving in the right direction before general manager David Griffin pulled off the series of trades that provided Cleveland with a winning roster. When the play-signal story spread and gained traction, Blatt became a pinata in the court of public opinion.
However, two months later, here are the Cavs, in the NBA Finals. Here they are, with Blatt having outcoached NBA Coach of the Year Mike Budenholzer in the Eastern Conference finals against the Atlanta Hawks. Blatt held his own against Brad Stevens of the Boston Celtics and Tom Thibodeau when opposing the Chicago Bulls in the East semis. Blatt has been able to get his guys to play markedly improved perimeter defense in the postseason.
Hmmm…. guess who else authored a postseason defensive renaissance for his team this year in the world of basketball? Try Mike Krzyzewski of Duke, who watched his team defend better in the NCAA tournament than it had for most of the regular season in college basketball.
Maybe this Blatt guy really isn’t out of his depth, that timeout call in Game 4 of the Bulls series notwithstanding.
Maybe Blatt has done really well to coexist with LeBron, and maybe — just maybe — he’s looking at this version of King James and is saying, “Gee, why should I get in his way if he’s so good at relating to and cultivating the players on my roster?”
This leads us into the focal point of this piece.
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Our featured item at Crossover Chronicles last week was the second episode of our newly-created podcast series. Podcast creator and CC staff writer Sean Woodley teamed with staff writer John Cannon to interview Warrior play-by-play man Tim Roye and Cleveland general manager David Griffin. In the David Griffin portion of the podcast, the flow of discussion (listen for yourself if you haven’t already) leads to this essential point: LeBron James is both a basketball savant and a great leader of men, a rock in terms of providing structure and inspiration for younger, less experienced players. I’m not going to elaborate more — click the link and check out a fascinating interview with Griffin, the architect of the season-changing deals for the Cavs and a perfect fit for the organization.
The point to make about that revelation is that LeBron really is smart enough and wise enough at this point in his career to be a player-coach, much as Bill Russell was a player-coach (and a championship one) late in his 11-ring career with the Boston Celtics. No one knocked Red Auerbach for turning over control of the Celtics for allowing a man as astute as Russell to coach his franchise. The thought should occur to us that if Blatt wants this LeBron to coach the team on the floor, is that really as stupid as many people thought it was… or is?
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We’re led to the conclusion that one of a few men most magnified by the first year of LeBron in “Cleveland Part Two” is Miami Heat coach Erik Spoelstra. When LeBron came to Miami, fresh off “The Decision,” it was clear how much he had yet to learn about leadership and carrying himself in the face of both expectations and pressures, internal and external alike. LeBron was physically fresher that season, but mentally, he had so much to discover about becoming a champion between the ears and in communications with teammates. Dwyane Wade was the wise old sage in South Florida, and while sharing the ball in crunch time on the 2011 Heat was its own issue, the bigger problem for LeBron was that his attitude had not developed to the point it needed to.
We’ve discussed this before: LeBron’s poor play in the 2011 Finals against the Dallas Mavericks was not the greatest indictment of that season. It was his snappy, defensive, not-particularly-accountable press conference after being eliminated in Game 6 by the Mavs. LeBron was still the insecure person who set up “The Decision,” the insecure person who reacted so bizarrely in his first go-round in Cleveland, especially in Game 5 of the 2010 Boston series, the one that led to his exit.
LeBron grew up in Miami, in the offseason following the 2011 Finals. He could have continued to pout, but after that ugly presser, he withdrew and absorbed the fact that he had to change the way he mentally approached the sport if he was going to fulfill his talents and create the kind of career he was capable of forging. We can now see today that such a process has fully run its course. LeBron is a complete figure in the sense that his leadership skills are extensive and polished. He’s led Cleveland to the Finals without Kevin Love in the tougher rounds of the playoffs, and without a healthy Kyrie Irving.
In Miami, it’s true that LeBron had Wade and Bosh to lean on, but a coach still had to make those egos work together with role players in a very complicated situation, one that did not automatically come together in the first season. Erik Spoelstra did not have good reason to allow LeBron to become a player-coach in 2011 and 2012, because LeBron was still learning how to lead others. David Blatt is in a much better spot to cede some power or decision-making freedom to LeBron, for a whole host of reasons, but Spoelstra really didn’t inhabit that same position.
We can now see, with the benefit of hindsight — and the benefit of LeBron’s noticeable maturity relative to four years ago — how well Erik Spoelstra handled one of the most pressure-packed coaching assignments in NBA history.
As these Finals continue, keep in mind that Erik Spoelstra has in many ways enabled David Blatt to stand in the NBA’s world championship series — with pressures, certainly, but also the chance to win a ring in the fullness of time.
