The name the keeps coming up the most as being involved in the Cleveland Cavaliers firing their coach David Blatt is their star player LeBron James - (Keith Allison photo)

David Blatt - (NBA photo)   Kevin Love - (NBA photo)

Graffiti such as "Die Arab Sand-Niggers!" is often sprayed on Palestinian houses by Israeli settlers. Location: Hebron, West Bank, Palestine - American politicians including Hillary Clinton support Israel and their murdering, racist practices - (CPT-Hebron photo)

SPORTS NOTES - BACKLASH FROM the CAVALIERS DAVID BLATT being FIRED

James Loving/National Radio Text Service

As the smoke clears regarding the Cleveland Cavaliers firing their coach David Blatt the reasons why it happened stories are running rampant. The name the keeps coming up the most in the teams decision to eliminate Blatt is their star player LeBron James. The club denies that James factored into the decision but the rumors live on as Blatt rides off into the sunset…

Saturday, January 23, 2016

THE CAVALIERS SHIT HITS THE FAN

As the smoke clears over the Cleveland Cavaliers firing of their coach David Blatt a can of worms is opening. Reports vary noting that Blatt is the best coach ever fired with a winning record to he was a coach that made mistakes and lost the support of his team in the locker room.

The most noteworthy view is Blatt had a major problem with LeBron James who supposedly didn't respect game decisions. It was such an issue that came to head in last season's second round playoffs in game four against the Chicago Bulls. James disagreed with a play that Blatt called his own. The result was James hit the game winning shot.

James' actions humiliated Blatt in front of the team and the millions of television viewers around the world. Since that incident the wounds never healed. James is said to have ignored Blatt's presence and authority by calling time outs and making substitutions.

Blatt also was to have made mistakes in alienating the players in his efforts to chum up with James. In doing so he slighted Kevin Love whom the coach failed to design a system that made the most of Love's talents.

The result is obvious that since Love left the Minnesota Timberwolves he has been playing like a fish out of water with the Cavs. Since joining the team last season Love's numbers are down and his presence is waning.

The shocker is the team was on a two game wining streak when the ax came down on Blatt's head delivered by Cavaliers GM David Griffin. At the time the Cavs were in first place in the Western Conference after 41 games with a 30-11 record. That 41 game mark is exactly one half of an NBA 82 game regular season.

Last season the team was off to a slow start and had a 19-20 losing record before they turned things around. They made it to the NBA finals only to be blown out by the Golden State Warriors.

At the time of his firing Blatt had one of the all-time leagues best winning percentage with 83-40 record in less than two seasons. Blatt's winning percentage of .675 is outdone only by Steve Kerr (.848, one title with the Warriors), Billy Donovan (.727, first season with the Thunder), Phil Jackson (.704, 11 titles with the Bulls and Lakers), Billy Cunningham (.698, 1 title with the 76ers), Gregg Popovich (.690, 5 titles with the Spurs) and Larry Bird (.687, 1 Finals appearance with the Pacers).

The underlying reason for the sacking repeatedly comes back to the sour relationship between James and Blatt. The word is James never respected Blatt. James preferred to be coach by an ex NBA player. Blatt's replacement Tyronn Leu, the teams assistant coach, who had an 11 year career in the league as a spot player, fits that description.

According to Griffin he never consulted James about firing Blatt. The Cavs GM claims that he was aware of the friction in the locker room and felt that the team wasn't playing up to their potential thus he decided and coaching change was the answer.

In one report it noted that according to Chris Haynes of cleveland.com, Blatt tried too hard "to get in the good graces of his top talent." He held back from criticizing members of his Big Three - James, Love and Kyrie Irving -?? and whistled players for ticky-tack fouls on his stars during practice.

Blatt alienated players trying to kiss up to LeBron and never won over his biggest star, who was dissatisfied with many of Blatt's coaching moves and his European pedigree. In the end, though, it appears it wasn't Blatt's failure to win over LeBron as much as it was his failure to win the locker room. The situation created a disconnect between the players and coach.

As they say make it your own, the strange thing is the Blatt topic came up in my life a month ago when I was sitting next to a former Israeli soldier for 9 hours on a bus ride from Thailand to Cambodia.

The Israeli brought up the subject that the Cavaliers team didn't respect Blatt and that at the beginning of last season all of the Israeli media were reporting on it. The Israeli seemed disturbed about the team's reaction to Blatt who was formerly the Israeli national team coach.

Blatt is an American who played basketball at Princeton University. Princeton is not a school for dummies therefore Blatt must be a very intelligent person. Following his college career Blatt played in Israel and then became a coach.

It is no secret that I am not a friend of the Israeli's as the US government claims to be. I do not support the theft of Palestinian land and business and the slaughter of its people particularly babies and 8 to 12 year-old children that throw stones at body armored Israeli soldiers.

In previous articles I have always maintained the position that something is wrong with anyone that supports Israel's apartheid practices and the feeling that they have the right to kill Palestinians and steal their land because of what the Germans did to them in creating the Holocaust which makes no sense at all.

I questioned the support given by NBA players that visited Israel this past summer with Israeli NBA player Omri Casspi of the Sacramento Kings to play exhibition games to fight anti-Israel Boycott.

The Israeli's refer to the Palestinians as ARAB SAND NIGGERS. In reality the predominantly black NBA players are more closely related in blood to the Palestinians than to the Israelis. In essence they are somewhat their black brothers.

One theory is that more NBA players are becoming better informed about the situation in the Middle East and there is an underlying current about not being so warm and fuzzy with the Israeli's who are basically murderers and thieves.

In a recently BBC presented telecast of the show Hard Talk an Iranian guest on the program reflected on the friction between Iran and Saudi Arabia who are known for over 2,000 beheadings in the past 30 years according to a report on the AlJazeera News channel.

His point was the forced closure of Saudi Arabian government offices in Iran was in protest of the beheading of an Iranian cleric. As he stated that, "the chickens are coming home to roost."

In Blatt's case perhaps he is the backlash victim of Israel's war crimes against humanity. And so it goes…

NOTE:

Tonight the Cavaliers lost their first game under Leu to the Chicago Bulls 96-83.

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