The sideways glances met each other around the huddle. David Blatt was sitting in the middle, sliding a pen over his grease board, instructing Shawn Marion where to go on the important offensive set that was about to take place. Marion, however, was not in the game and had not been told to check in. Blatt had simply lost track.
The players noticed things like this happening during the coach’s first few months on the job. Sometimes he would have the same player in two places when he drew up plays, or assign the same man two different assignments on defense. Other times his hands were shaking as he drew the lines, sometimes he let assistant coaches come to the center of the huddle to draw the plays. There would be times when LeBron James would dispute the strategy. Blatt didn’t just have to make a choice on what to run, he had to sell it to James. And mental mistakes, especially as they piled up, did not help the pitch.
During practice scrimmages when coaches called fouls—a naturally controversial situation—players noticed Blatt sometimes clammed up when there were arguments. In Europe when the coach made a ruling, whether it was a foul call in a scrimmage or who was taking the last shot in a playoff game, his authority was almost never questioned. Blatt, who was revered in Europe and adored and massively supported by Israeli fans, was used to authority. This was not the case in the NBA, where power is fleeting for many coaches, especially those without accepted experience.
James was ultracompetitive. At times he’d have a meltdown over losing a scrimmage or drill. In frustration in losing, he was known to take the ball and heave it 80-plus feet to the other end of the building. When he didn’t agree with a foul call, be it in the final minute of a playoff game or in a routine end-of-practice run, he would protest. When he would slow practice down ranting and raving about some call, Blatt would become a wallflower. Sometimes it took assistant Ty Lue to step up and tell James to shut up, it was a foul and go run the next play.
Within weeks the players, notably the wing of veterans, started to whisper. They had begun to believe that Blatt, who arrived with a reputation as a short-fused taskmaster, was actually afraid of James. In retrospect, perhaps Blatt should’ve told James on the first day to hold his requested meeting later. It might’ve upset him, but it might’ve fostered respect.
Many of the Cavs players liked Blatt personally. He was generally good-natured and many liked his personality. They just didn’t really know what kind of coach he wanted to be. The veterans were aware he was in a challenging spot, but they weren’t sure of the identity he wanted for the team. The older players preferred that he’d be more communicative. The younger players, like Irving and tough-nosed guard Matthew Dellavedova, seemed to bond with the coach more easily.
Opinions on the early days between James and Blatt are varied—different people on the team saw different angles. There were times when Blatt did show some of his trademark mettle and times when James was supportive and fell in line. But there was no disputing Blatt was in a tough situation. Frequently James didn’t offer support within the team and in public. Within weeks it seemed James wasn’t completely invested in his coach’s success. Combined with Blatt’s sometimes shaky poise, it was not the best recipe for developing a bond between the coach and best player.
So as the Cavs sat with a 5–7 record as Thanksgiving approached, James felt he needed to make changes, and he didn’t feel Blatt was vital enough to be wholly included in the process.
“I have a low tolerance for things of this nature,” James said as he evaluated the Cavs’ record. “So it’s something I’m working on as well, which I knew from the beginning that that was going to be my biggest test to see how much patience I’ve got.”
Starting with a game against the Orlando Magic, James effectively took control of primary ball handling, pushing Irving to play mostly off the ball when they were on the court together. The concepts Blatt had installed in the early season were gone. And the offense came to life. The Cavs rolled off eight straight wins, turning their prospects around thanks to James’s playmaking.
They beat the Magic by 32 points and James racked up 29 points and 11 assists. They avenged their loss to the Wizards, pounding them by 26 points as James registered 29 points and eight assists. They beat the Indiana Pacers by 12 as Kevin Love had one of his finest games, scoring 28 points with 12 rebounds. Love had 27 points, Irving had 28, and James had 26 points and 10 more assists as the team beat Milwaukee. Irving had a huge game in Madison Square Garden as he put up 37 points to beat the Knicks, James repeatedly setting him up as the de facto point guard with 12 more assists. James had 13 assists in a revenge win against the Raptors, then he scored 35 points the next week when they beat the Raptors again.
The winning streak eased tensions and enabled James to focus elsewhere. On one memorable night in Brooklyn during the streak, the team executed a protest and mingled with dignitaries. In warmups, Irving and James wore shirts that read “I Can’t Breathe,” a reference to an African American man named Eric Garner, who had been killed as police attempted to arrest him on Staten Island. The tragedy was captured on video, where Garner could be heard telling the police he couldn’t breathe. It created a national reaction. James and Irving violated NBA protocol by wearing the shirts and showing support after other athletes had done the same.
Once the game started, focus turned to the royals as Prince William of England and his wife, Kate Middleton, arrived while on a rare visit to the United States. They sat courtside next to Jay-Z and Beyoncé, making for an irresistible moment that had photographers craning and the crowd too transfixed to watch the game, which the Cavs won yet again as James led the team in assists. Afterward, James met with the Duke and Duchess of Cambridge.
“The stuff that you read about, people like them are only in books growing up. And to hear that they’re coming to town to see me play and they want to see me do what I do best, it’s a huge honor,” James said.
As the Cavs left New York, James posted to social media a picture he had taken with the royals and said it would be going on his wall. In the photo he’d posed with his arm around the Duchess, which was frowned on immediately by the British press because it defied protocol that no one is to touch the royal family. Such is a day in the life of LeBron James.
The royal family mini-gaffe reinforced that nothing early in the season could be drama-free. Sure enough, the Cavs’ winning streak came to an end in Oklahoma City when James had to pull himself from the lineup with a sore knee. Then during the first half, Irving landed awkwardly on his left leg after defending a shot attempt by Russell Westbrook. He crumpled to the ground and yelled, “Call Steve!” to his teammates, meaning athletic trainer Steve Spiro. Irving feared he’d done something to his left knee. He avoided serious injury, but the scare derailed the team.
A week later they didn’t dodge the injury bullet. Anderson Varejão tore his Achilles’ tendon as he reached for a rebound in a home game against the Minnesota Timberwolves. He would be lost for the season and face a grueling recovery. It was a blow because the team was already thin at the position and because for a player in his thirties, an Achilles’ tear is devastating. The team had just signed him to a three-year, $30 million contract extension in October. The news of the MRI came down on Christmas Eve as the Cavs were about to fly to Miami.
Then there was the Waiters issue. After losing his starting job, Waiters had been pouty at times and insufferable at others. Always known as a shoot-first guard, he had grown frustrated by his lack of playing time and lack of shots. Sometimes he’d physically jump up and down when he was open, demanding the ball, and then slump his shoulders like a child when he didn’t get it.
Waiters’s South Philadelphia neighborhood was immersed in violence as he grew up, and it had a profound impact on him. When he was eight, he and his mother were caught in the crossfire of a shootout in a park and he escaped bullets by falling to the ground. When he was fourteen, one of his cousins was shot and killed. When he was fifteen, a close friend and teammate was shot more than ten times and died. Another of his cousins was murdered a few months earlier. In the spring of 2016, Waiters’s brother died in a shooting in his old neighborhood.
When Waiters committed to play at Syracuse before his sophomore year of high school and at age nineteen became the No. 4 pick in the draft, it was not only a remarkable success story, it was a remarkable survival story. His past shaped his game. He played with anger and like it could all be taken from him. There wasn’t much finesse, there wasn’t much nuance. He was often at his best trying for the impossible. He didn’t always excel in doing the mundane but needed tasks.
James had hopes of molding him, but had quickly given up at Waiters’s insistence on playing his preferred style. Knowing Waiters was hoping for a contract extension the following year, Griffin had met with him and talked about the role he could fill next to James that could make him valuable to the team. This also failed.
The veterans like James Jones, Mike Miller, and Brendan Haywood tried to counsel Waiters. They told him he needed to play differently with James, to cut off the ball to get open or to run the floor with him and offer himself as an option. Waiters flat out told teammates that wasn’t the way he played. Whether his points were valid was immaterial; at best he was going to be the team’s fourth offensive option. This was a fact even if he didn’t want to accept it.
Blatt was playing him less than 10 minutes a game some nights. The front office stepped up their efforts to trade him. Players started to whisper that his days were numbered, and the media’s attention on his plunging playing time grew.
The loss of Varejão was worrisome because he was one of the team’s true quality defenders. The defense, which Blatt had wanted to make a calling card, often lagged. This was a challenge, because Irving, Waiters, and Love were not good defenders and the Cavs didn’t have a classic shot blocker to guard the rim. In addition, the team’s lack of depth on the wings continued to be an issue.
Meanwhile, Kevin Love had started to show some signs of frustration. He went through a period where he only averaged 10 shots a game over a two-week period, nine fewer than he’d averaged the previous season. He knew his touches would drop, but the process was starting to get to him. Sometimes he would show exasperation at not getting the ball. It was as Chris Bosh had forewarned.
All these developments made the team feel like it was on a losing streak even though they came into Christmas having won 12 of 15 games. James admitted he had some butterflies returning to Miami. Wade, attempting to be magnanimous and to help his friend, gave several interviews before the game asking the fans to be respectful to James. “I think he should be received very well at the start of the game,” Wade told Bleacher Report.
The fans booed James, but it was nothing like when he returned to Cleveland after signing with Miami in 2010. Midway through the first quarter the Heat played a video tribute to James’s four seasons and the crowd gave him a standing ovation. James waved and appeared to get a little emotional. Had the Cavs tried to show a video tribute in 2010, there might have been a riot.
As for the game, the Cavs played poorly and were beaten soundly by the Heat. James had 30 points and Wade had 31, a duel that delighted the audience. Luol Deng got some revenge on his old team, scoring 25 points. In the second half, Love tried to throw a long pass to James and, summing up the day, overshot him. James tried to chase the ball and ended up going into the stands. He leapt over the first row of seats and landed hard, and pain shot up his left knee, which had already been bothering him. He went to the locker room and was done for the night. Late in the game, Irving aggravated his left knee that he’d tweaked in Oklahoma City. All in all, it was a miserable Christmas for the Cavs.
“We’re not that good right now,” James said, summarizing everything surrounding the team.
The next night the Cavs were in Orlando. James played, though maybe he shouldn’t have. Irving did not, his knee aching. Upset about the team’s play in Miami, upset about the defense, upset about Waiters, and cranky because of his knee, James was disconnected for much of the game. Some at courtside were taken aback at how he ignored Blatt during the game, sitting off by himself during timeouts.
Midway through the third quarter, James was guarding Magic forward Tobias Harris, a young player James had no history with. Harris whipped around and his elbows just missed James’s face. James backed up and glared and the two started yelling at each other, with Harris finishing by barking “Stop flopping!” to James. Though he’s one of the most physically imposing players in the league, opponents had been annoyed with James’s knack for exaggerating contact over the years, something that was commonplace for the whole team when he played in Miami.
In an instant, James’s demeanor turned. No longer floating and uninterested, he went on the attack. He scored 18 of his 29 points over the last quarter and a half and smothered Harris on defense, holding him to one basket. The Cavs ended up winning by nine.
“The words that he said, that got me going,” James said. “I was actually in chill mode tonight, but chill mode was deactivated after that.”
The incident was a great way to spice up the game, but it overshadowed two things. One was James essentially admitting he was taking a game off—chill mode—and the other was that Blatt benched Love in the fourth quarter because of defensive issues. At one point Blatt asked Love if he wanted to go in, but he’d sat so long, he just waved him off.
Griffin had been talking to teams about trading Waiters for weeks and was getting traction with the Thunder, who were seeking a way to bolster scoring in their backcourt. Separately he’d also been talking to the Knicks about trading for one of their available guards, free-agent-to-be Iman Shumpert. When Varejão went down, the front office had to start looking for centers as well. For months the team had been trying to get the Denver Nuggets to trade them Timofey Mozgov, a huge 7-foot-2 center whom Blatt knew well from his time as the Russian national team coach. The Nuggets had resisted or asked a huge price.
But Griffin had another problem. Ownership had gotten jittery about Blatt, and conversations about whether there needed to be a change had been taking place. Griffin was against it. He knew the team was a little banged up. He also knew he hadn’t given Blatt the kind of depth he needed. The veterans he signed were struggling and Blatt didn’t have many live bodies to bring off the bench, especially when Dellavedova got hurt.
Two days after the game in Orlando, the Cavs were pounded at home, losing to the Pistons by 23. Irving missed another game. As a Detroit native and resident, Gilbert didn’t take well to losses to the Pistons. The Cavs played lifelessly and the rhetoric afterward was as bad as it had been all year.
“We’re not a very good team,” James said, echoing what he said at Christmas. “We’re still trying to find our way.”
Blatt admitted he wasn’t doing the best job but said he wasn’t concerned about losing the team, which was now 18–12. The next day, ESPN reported that his job was in jeopardy. Blatt reacted negatively to the report, saying that it was “unfair.” When James was asked about the news, he gave an evasive answer.
“Yeah, he’s our coach. I mean, what other coach do we have?” James said. When asked if he should give Blatt an endorsement, he made it clear it wasn’t up to him: “Listen, man, I don’t pay no bills around here.”
Irving, on the other hand, defended his coach: “I would do anything for Coach Blatt.”
With the pressure building, the team was dealt another setback. As the Cavs prepared to play in Atlanta, a sore back James had been dealing with worsened. His knee was also still bothering him. Shortly before the game, the Cavs scratched him from the lineup and he spent much of the first half down in the Hawks locker room in their whirlpool trying to loosen up his back. It was his thirtieth birthday and this wasn’t how he wanted to spent it. He was feeling his age as he watched his team fall down by 10 on their way to another loss, his cursing echoing off the walls and throughout the locker room area, catching Hawks employees off guard.
The next day, New Year’s Eve, James went to the Cleveland Clinic to get an MRI. It showed significant inflammation in his lower back. This at least explained why he hadn’t looked like himself physically for the previous few weeks. Team doctors recommended he get a powerful anti-inflammatory shot to help the issue, a treatment that would sideline him for two weeks. He had never missed more than a week due to injury in his career.
James had fought advice to rest for several weeks, but now couldn’t do it any longer. He got the shot and skipped that night’s game with the Milwaukee Bucks. So did Kevin Love, whose own back had seized up on him. The team was crushed by 16 points, their fourth loss in five games.
It was the close of a trying week for Griffin, who was holding off a push to fire Blatt while pulling together a complex trade. He’d found a home for Waiters in Oklahoma City but was trying to get his hands on Shumpert as part of a three-team deal.
The Knicks wanted a first-round pick for Shumpert, but Griffin didn’t want to give it. He needed his picks to get Mozgov; the Nuggets were demanding two first-round picks. The Knicks also wanted the Cavs to accept J. R. Smith in a trade. A volatile shooter who had been a darling in New York when he won the 2013 Sixth Man of the Year Award, he’d fallen out of favor with new president Phil Jackson after two suspensions over the previous year and for his love of the New York nightlife. Griffin wasn’t in favor of trading for Smith. He was the type of player the Cavs needed, a wing with good size who could shoot, but he was so prone to bad decisions that much of the NBA considered him toxic.
As he did the summer before when he was mulling the Love trade, Griffin asked the Knicks for permission to talk to Smith. They had a phone call. Smith had been offended when he heard how the Knicks were basically attempting to give him away and attach him to Shumpert like a bad debt. He told Griffin he’d “walk to Cleveland.”
Griffin brought the topic to James. Smith and James were just a year apart and had gotten to know each other as teenagers. After James’s first season in 2004, Smith came to the NBA right from high school, and the Cavs considered drafting him but instead took a more seasoned player, Luke Jackson. Ever since, Smith had wanted to play with James, and several times he came to Akron in the summer to work out with him. With the team badly struggling and in need of a talent injection, James told Griffin he should make the deal for Smith. When Griffin expressed further concern, James said he’d take on the responsibility of keeping Smith in line.
Griffin met with his front office and ownership, specifically co-owner Nate Forbes, who was always involved in such matters. They were still shaky on Smith, but James’s reassurance and the call had turned them around a bit on the issue. Shumpert was in the last year of his deal and Mozgov had a team option for the next year; those investments were safer. Smith had a $6.4 million player option, which had the Knicks turned off. If Smith was a bad fit, the Cavs would be on the hook and wouldn’t be able to get rid of him. Ultimately, with Forbes’s and Gilbert’s support, Griffin decided Smith would be on a short leash and they’d just release him and pay him off if the plan didn’t work.
Finally with some clarity, Griffin and his front office started finalizing the details of the trades. They were trying to assemble a four-team deal with the Thunder, Knicks, and Nuggets that would send out Waiters and a first-round pick and land Shumpert, Smith, and Mozgov.
The mechanics of such a move are complex, but Griffin still had another fire to put out regarding Blatt. With James out and the Cavs headed for a long West Coast trip, Griffin knew things were probably going to get worse before they got better. But he also believed Blatt deserved a chance to work with a more complete team. Over the previous summer it was Griffin who was skeptical of Blatt but Gilbert who wanted him. Now here was Griffin making the case for Blatt to get more time. With the trades about to come down, Griffin was able to calm the storm and get agreement to give Blatt a chance after the trades.
So on a Sunday morning, January 4, Griffin called an impromptu news conference before an afternoon game with the Dallas Mavericks. He blasted the concept that Blatt’s job was in danger and made it clear that he would not be fired. It was a classic vote of confidence even though Griffin tried not to package it that way.
“Coach Blatt is our coach, he’s going to remain our coach,” Griffin said and chided the media for stories attacking Blatt in the previous days. “Do not write that as a vote of confidence. He never needed one. It was never a question. So don’t write it that way. That narrative is done. No change is being made, period.”
Without James, the Cavs responded by losing to the Mavericks by 19, with Irving pulling himself midway because of back spasms. Griffin, though, wasn’t paying attention. He spent much of the game on the phone in his office next to the locker room trying to put together his deal. The final piece was when the Knicks dropped their demand for a first-round pick and agreed to take a second-rounder because Smith was in the deal. As Griffin was finalizing trading him away, Waiters went 4-of-14 shooting in the loss to Dallas. He missed one three-pointer so badly that it hit the top of the backboard, prompting boos from the crowd.
Griffin felt like he was on the verge of fixing the roster. He thought his strong comments to the media backing his coach would end that drama until James could get healthy and the new players would turn things around.
On January 5, 2015, Waiters was excited because he was making his first start in two months and it was going to be in front of dozens of friends and family members at Wells Fargo Center in Philadelphia, not far from where he grew up. Irving and James didn’t make the trip to Philly because of injuries, and Waiters was promoted to starter. He was announced and was removing his warmups when Raja Bell, the Cavs’ director of player administration, mysteriously arrived on the bench and told him he had to come with him to the locker room immediately.
The Cavs had been plotting this trade in one form or another since the previous August. In addition to Waiters and the draft picks and bench players Alex Kirk and Lou Amundson, the Cavs used something called a traded player exception to execute the deal. It functioned like a gift certificate created by previous trades. Team director of strategic planning Brock Aller and team counsel Anthony Leotti hatched a multilayer plan that involved five trades with four other teams. Every few days over the summer, the Cavs had made minor transactions that barely went noticed because they mostly involved swapping future second-round picks and end-of-roster players. But it ended up becoming crucial to the team in completing the deal.
Another factor in the trades was owner Dan Gilbert agreeing to take on $9 million in additional salary as part of the swaps. The moves put the Cavs into the luxury tax, meaning it would cost Gilbert around $15 million in actual additional dollars. The previous summer the team had gone nearly $23 million under the cap to sign James, and now were nearly $15 million over it. The league had never seen a swing of spending like it. It fulfilled a promise Gilbert had made to James that he’d spend to put a team around him.
Griffin’s relief was short-lived. As the team trumpeted the arrival of the new players, there was another dustup. It became public James had gone to Miami to work on his back and knee rehab on his own. It made sense, James going to the warm weather to help his back. On the other hand, the optics were terrible. The Cavs were struggling and had just been beaten by the Heat, and James, who was only on a one-year contract, was back in Miami and spending time with old friends. The Cavs had cleared the trip but hoped it would stay secret.
“That was by design,” Blatt said, forced to explain the situation. “He hasn’t been around per orders of the doctor.”
After losing with the depleted roster in Philadelphia to a team that was 4–28, the Cavs lost again by 12 points at home to the Rockets. Irving came back and looked great, scoring 38 points. But Mozgov hadn’t yet arrived, Shumpert was nursing a shoulder injury and wouldn’t be back for two weeks, and, in his first game, Smith shot 0-of-5. The Cavs were about to leave on a five-game trip to the West Coast. Even though James was feeling better and nearing a return, the Cavs had lost six of seven games and were in free fall.