It remains to be seen just how much power new Cleveland Cavaliers head coach Tyronn Lue will have in the locker room after the team fired David Blatt last week.
What we do know is that Lue, who played 11 years in the NBA, isn’t afraid to talk to the press about his team’s current situation.
Even prior to coaching his first game with Cleveland, Lue had some interesting remarks regarding two of his star players (via Cleveland Plain Dealer):
“With our young stars, with Kyrie and Kevin, they’re young, so it’s still about their brand and different things, it’s just way different.”
Let’s just forget that the man likely responsible for Lue’s promotion, LeBron James, has an international brand that no other professional athlete in North America can rival.
That shouldn’t be lost in all this.
Lue doubled down on this comments following his first win as the Cavaliers head coach Monday night against Minnesota:
“You gotta think about that,” the new head coach said. “That’s real sacrifice for a guy who’s won a championship, it was Wade country, and then have to turn the keys over to LeBron James when it was always your team.”
For his part, Irving seemed to have taken issue with his coach’s comments:
“Me and Kev (Love) will do a great job with adjusting to it, but our brands are the last thing we’re worried about,” Irving said. “If Kevin was worried about his brand, I don’t think Kevin would’ve came back. And for me to sign here, it was for a legitimate reason and we have a bigger goal at hand that we want to accomplish. That’s always coming first.”
There’s a whole heck of a lot to look at here. Outside of the continued drama we are seeing in Cleveland, Irving made a really good point here.
Love could have easily decided to leave the James-led Cavaliers team in the rear-view mirror this past summer. As a free agent, the big man had an option to bolt Cleveland for larger markets, including the Los Angeles area.
In doing so, he would have been the new face of the Lakers franchise in the nation’s second-largest media market — a market where he played college basketball at UCLA.
With all the drama surrounding the Cavaliers since Blatt’s firing, it’s safe to say the issues didn’t simply disappear with his ousting.
The larger question moving forward is whether this big three and a rookie head coach can compete for a title in 2015-16. Cleveland still boasts the best record in the Eastern Conference at 31-12.
It also has a huge game coming up at home against the San Antonio Spurs on Saturday night. That will be a big barometer of where this squad stands heading into the All-Star break.