Coach David Blatt: Expecting A Cavs Title Is Unfair To Rest Of NBA

INDEPENDENCE (92.3 The Fan) – The Cleveland Cavaliers tip off their 45th season Thursday night with a lofty goal – to win Cleveland’s first professional sports championship in 50 years.

The return of LeBron James has helped resurrect the franchise, which was left in ruins with his departure 4 years earlier.

Many national publications aren’t predicting a title for the Cavaliers, they’re expecting it which doesn’t seem right to first year head coach David Blatt.

“Anybody talking about us winning it all, they’re being unfair to those great NBA teams that are out there that have either won it or been there to win it,” Blatt said. “And also to us, as a team that’s talented but new. We have a lot of work to do before we can start claiming anything before it’s time.”

The return of James plus the additions of 3-time All Star forward Kevin Love and NBA champions Shawn Marion, James Jones and Mike Miller combined with 2-time All Star guard Kyrie Irving have vaulted expectations into the stratosphere as the league’s new super team.

Dion Waiters, who enters his third season and just had the fourth year option on his rookie contract picked up, is adjusting from playing with young players trying to learn to play together to a veteran team that is expected to win every night they take the floor.

“We haven’t done anything yet,” Waiters said. “You got to look at the Spurs, teams like that who won the championship last year and got every guy back. We’ve got to look at teams like that. We can’t just come into the game thinking everything is going to be easy.

“We know everybody is going to be gunning for us. That’s what makes it fun though, just to go out there and we know we’re going to get everybody’s best shot.”

What has helped Waiters is James’ leadership as well as the championship pedigree of the veterans who joined the team in Cleveland this summer.

Every team that is expected to contend wants to win a championship, but it’s much easier said than done – especially in the NBA. For one, there’s an 82-game regular season schedule. And then there’s the playoffs. It’ll take winning three best of seven series just to get to the NBA Finals.

The Cavaliers saw how difficult that was in James’ first 7 years. They made the conference semi-finals 5 times, the conference finals twice and the NBA Finals once. The inability to get over the hump was one of the reason’s the 4-time NBA MVP bolted for Miami where he won 4 conference titles and 2 championships in 4 seasons.

James and the Cavaliers were swept in the 2007 Finals by the San Antonio Spurs, who have made the playoffs 19 straight seasons and won 5 NBA titles over that span. James lost again to the Spurs last season in the Finals after beating them the year before.

San Antonio’s run under head coach Gregg Popovich is nothing less than remarkable.

To put into perspective how grueling an NBA post season is, the Spurs reached the conference finals in just 4 of their 14 other playoff seasons during this run that they are on.

“That’s been a team that over the years has not only been successful but has contributed to the style of play that I think is becoming more and more prevalent NBA-wide,” Blatt said. “I give Coach Pop and the players of San Antonio a lot of credit for the style that they play and for the willingness on the part of the players to be non-ball-dominant and to play together.”

Getting the Cavaliers, who are loaded with stars, to do the same is Blatt’s greatest challenge before thinking about making a post season run. That is why Blatt isn’t ready to crown his team for anything other than hoping they play up to their capabilities in Thursday night’s opener with the Knicks.

“Obviously now that the real games are getting started, we’re going to find out,” Blatt said. “I thought we showed in preseason that we’re a pretty good, competitive group and we played some good teams. But, there’s a big difference between preseason and regular season. We all know that, for everyone. But we got the right kind of personalities and the right kind of character guys to certainly get out there and make an effort every night.

“We’re talking about being the best team that we can be and progressing day-to-day and hopefully putting ourselves in a position where we can compete with anyone.”

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