Four months ago Sunday, I suffered a pang of sympathy for LeBron James. (I got over the crab dribble days when he tortured the Wizards long ago.) For it was that day, Jan. 22, when he learned (or orchestrated, if you enjoy conspiracy) that the fifth coach in his baker's dozen years-long career would be yet another taskmaster with little if any NBA experience. That day, it was Tyronn Lue, best known in Washington as a Lilliputian of an NBA backup point guard during the Doug Collins-Michael Jordan Wizards era.
Before Lue, David Blatt guided James’s Cavaliers for a year. At the time, Blatt was known as the best American basketball coach in Europe, which is kind of like being the best French chef anywhere but France. Before Blatt, James had Erik Spoelstra in Miami, with all of two seasons on his clipboard when James descended into his lap. And before Spoelstra, James had Mike Brown, who became a rookie head coach for the Cavaliers in James’s third season, the second of his now 12 consecutive all-star campaigns. He was 21 then.
With all due respect to the fine Paul Silas, his first coach in Cleveland, James hasn’t had a Bill Fitch or K.C. Jones as Larry Bird did, a Pat Riley (although Riley was up yonder for him in Miami) as Magic Johnson did, or a Phil Jackson as Michael Jordan wound up with in Chicago.
Amazingly, it continues to work out pretty well for him.
Consider: This NBA postseason was expected to be particularly difficult for James and his Cavaliers for a reason that developed surprisingly as the regular season played out. It was? The oft-maligned Eastern Conference didn’t live down to its reputation.
It is easy to forget that now, what with the Cavaliers having lost their first game of the postseason Saturday in Toronto before losing another in Game 4 on Monday night. The Raptors ended Cleveland’s streak of 17 consecutive playoff wins against conference opponents, which became the longest playoff win streak by a team within its own conference in NBA history.
Lue’s playoff record fell to 10-2 following Monday’s 105-99 loss. But it’s a credit to him, James and their team and not a discredit to the competition.
Most recent springs, you would get no argument claiming that such a run was merely fool's gold. The Western Conference was 118 games better than the East in head-to-head competition two seasons ago. It was 76 games better last season. But this season, it was 14 games better, which is almost negligible in a season of 1,230 games.
In fact, in the Pistons and Hawks this postseason, the Lue-James Cavaliers swept teams with more wins than the defending champion Warriors toppled out West in the Rockets and Blazers.
However Blatt was sent packing from Cleveland in January, he got a raw deal. After all, he'd helped James steer the Cavaliers back to the NBA Finals last year, where they won two games despite missing point guard Kyrie Irving and then-newly added forward Kevin Love. That was hardly a fireable offense, which may explain why Blatt told ESPN on Saturday that his old team, and not the record-setting Warriors, were the team to beat for the crown.
“I think they're playing great,” Blatt said of the Cavaliers. “I think that the players and the coaching staff are doing a terrific job. I really do. And I think the fact that they are healthy and have actually even added a piece or two makes them the team to beat right now, in my opinion.”
It’s a logical deduction given addition this postseason and not subtraction.
But the biggest factor in that equation may be Lue, or specifically his ability to accomplish something Blatt was unable to in Cleveland: finding Love.
Lue is benefiting from the good fortune of having a healthy Irving and Love. But even before Love’s shoulder was wrenched last postseason, rendering him a spectator, he became seen as more of an enigma in Blatt’s system than the all-star he arrived as.
It wasn't his production. His numbers last season were virtually the same as this season: 16 points, almost 10 rebounds and 50 percent shooting each game.
But how Love stood out under Blatt was from far away, particularly it seemed at crunch time, those crucial last five minutes of many NBA games. In some fourth quarters under Blatt, Love found himself on the bench. Sometimes Love, his confidence apparently rattled, even requested the in-game exile.
At least that was the perception. History suggests that may not have been the case. It was just that Love was no longer the 26 points and 12 rebounds guy he’d been his last season in Minnesota. (One of these days, Three 6 Mafia is going to make a song called “It’s Hard Out There for a Chris Bosh.”)
Love isn’t doing that game in and game out under Lue, either. But he appears to be getting utilized differently and in the final quarters of games. Just in these playoffs, he has registered four games with 20 or more points and 10 or more rebounds, harkening back to his days in the NBA’s wilderness of Minnesota.
More interesting, he was part of the Cavaliers’ three-point shooting barrage that came out of nowhere. In the last two games of the Atlanta series, Love chucked up 27 three-pointers, making 15 of them. Under Blatt in 143 games, he had only five games with 10 three-point attempts. Lue’s exploitation of Love’s versatility as a big man who can shoot from distance opened the floor for Irving to maneuver that much easier to the rim, and for James to bum rush it encountering even less resistance.
As a result, the Cavaliers now have what James had in Miami, what the Spurs had in Tim Duncan, Tony Parker and Manu Ginobli, what Paul Pierce, Kevin Garnett and Ray Allen had in Boston and, most important, what the Warriors have in Steph Curry, Klay Thompson and Draymond Green — a Big Three. That’s why they’re mowing down the East. It’s not because the conference is still the least.
Kevin B. Blackistone, ESPN panelist and visiting professor at the Philip Merrill College of Journalism at the University of Maryland, writes sports commentary for The Post.
