The Cleveland Cavaliers may have saved their season and tied their Eastern Conference Semifinals with the Chicago Bulls at two apiece, but it appears to be despite their head coach's best efforts.
Not only did David Blatt almost ruin LeBron James's game-winning shot by trying to call a timeout that he team didn't have, but James let loose during his postgame press conference that Blatt originally had James inboundsing the ball on the Cavs final possession. Um, what?
— Rob Perez (@WobLive) May 10, 2015"To be honest, the play that was drawn up, I scratched it. I told coach, 'Give me the ball.' We either going to go into overtime or I'm going to win it for us. I was supposed to take the ball out. I told coach there's no way I'm taking the ball out unless I can shoot it over the backboard and it goes in."
Now, Blatt's play may have had James getting the ball back after he passed it in, though with just 1.5 seconds left on the clock that seems unlikely. Or, with how poorly James was shooting, perhaps Blatt thought his best course of action was using LeBron as a decoy. But either way, you want your best player taking the last shot, and you're not going to deny someone like LeBron James that opportunity.
J.R. Smith also said that there was some "doubt" about Blatt's playcall at first.
Was passed along transcription of J.R. earlier. Smith says "there was doubt" at first, not, "it was dumb at first" https://t.co/g5KqxyG1QP
— Dave McMenamin (@mcten) May 11, 2015You don't usually hear players criticizing their coaches that openly, but given the circumstances (season basically on the line), the adrenaline and emotion was running high, and the Cavs reallyyyyy didn't like that playcall.
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