NBA Coach of the Year

David Blatt was unceremoniously dumped by the Cavs this afternoon, thus he is no longer in the running for Coach of the Year. Perhaps it was laughable to consider him a real candidate but his team was #1 in the East with the 4th best record over all, those metrics tend to put you in the running. But this team was different. Blatt was never Lebron's 'guy' and always seemed on the hot seat even though his record in the NBA is among the best of all time for the 140 or so games he coached. With rumblings about Kevin Love and/Timofey Mozgov getting traded, it seems like the Cavs are not done making moves.

The Cavs apparently have passed the job interim-free onto Tyronn Lue, who signed a 3yr/$9.5m contract today. The good news for me personally is now the only obvious job choice for John Calipari seems to be off the table. Kentucky is only kinda okay this year but UK in the Calipari tenure have been an every other year kinda team and he's got another fine class coming next year to be paired with this year's good but not great class. Cats in 2017, y'all! And he's gonna make way more than Tyronn Lue for the foreseeable future (though it would not have taken $120m to get Cal to Cleveland).

So can Lue win Coach of the Year? No. How could he? What could the Cavs possibly do that would be an improvement on what Blatt was going to do? Winning the East seems likely, winning the Championship seems unlikely, with Blatt or Lue. So unless the Cavs go undefeated for the rest of the year, I don't see how Lue (or even a Blatt/Lue platoon) finishes in the top five. Indeed, until the impending trade roster moves, I don't see any difference in the Cavs now. I guess the Cavs locker room will be a more pleasant place....but maybe not.

And what happens to Blatt? Well, the Spurs bench surely has a seat saved for him but the early buzz seems to have him going to the Wolves. I guess but it all depends on whether Garnett likes him. At the moment he seems to be controlling the vibe there so if KG signs off on Blatt it could work...but if he doesn't, it'll be Cleveland all over again for Blatt. My suggestion: how about Phoenix? The core of Bledsoe, Knight, Chandler, Warren, Len, for better or worse, pretty much is what it is and flushing out Markieff and Hornacek will leave the team in a place where they need only a strong coaching presence. Blatt is used to winning but in the NBA he'll have to grind. If the Suns front office could get out of the way, Phoenix might be a solid landing site for Blatt.

Coach of the Year is still Popvich. Can't really even think of a 2nd place.