Mozgov Taking The Fall
Not sure how many people watched Game 4 of the Finals, but most of the Cavs looked completely gassed. Lebron had by far his worst game, shooting something like 7-24 and also missed about 5 free throws. Dellavadova shot 3-14 and no one else on the team did anything at all. And predictably they ended up losing by 21. The one bright spot was Mozgov, who scored a career high of 28 points to go with 10 rebounds. He was by far the team's most effective player.
So what does Blatt do in Game 5? You guessed it, he benches Mozgov and plays him all of 9 minutes! And of course Cleveland loses again. Instead of putting the blame on everyone who played poorly, he essentially says that the one guy who played well was the reason that they lost! Completely, totally, incomprehensibly idiotic. It was the Caste System in a nutshell. Blame the successful, effective white athlete for his ineffective, uninspired black teammates.
I mean in that situation, if a coach wants his team to win, wouldn't you think he would use the one guy who performed well as an example to the rest of the team, and say something like "look how well Timo played last game. He really wants to win. Is he the only one on this team who wants this? You may never get this far again in your career. Play this next game like it's your last. Play with that fire that Timo did last game!" But no, he benches the one guy who produced. If I didn't know better I'd say it's almost like he wants his team to lose.
I had thought that Blatt was doing a good job for getting Cleveland this far, but after this latest episode, that move was so idiotic that he deserves to be fired.