Cleveland Cavaliers Relationship With Coach David Blatt Going South? GM Calls Idea "Ridiculous"

The Cleveland Cavaliers were widely expected to be the best team in the NBA this season, so their winter woes have been quite the storyline as we move toward the All-Star break. Star player LeBron James hasn’t quite meshed with his new coach, David Blatt, or the rest of his teammates.

Suffice to say, something is wrong in Cleveland, where the Cavs have now fallen to 19-15.

Reporters who wonder about the safety of Blatt’s job should be careful, though. The question appears to upset general manager David Griffin something awful.

"This narrative of our coaching situation is truly ridiculous," Griffin said on Sunday (via ESPN). "It's a non-story, it's a non-narrative. Coach Blatt is our coach, he's going to remain our coach. Do not write that as a vote of confidence. He never needed one. It was never a question. So don't write it that way."

That's strong language from a GM whose team appears to be crumbling before his eyes. Last week, ESPN reporter Brian Windhorst reported that journalists have very good reason to question Blatt’s future.

“There’s a growing tension … between the players and coach David Blatt,” Windhorst said. “There’s been a disconnect there that has been increasing. It may be something the organziation has to deal with either giving David Blatt a vote of confidence, or maybe looking at the position again … They have completely abandoned his offensive system. Lebron has taken over point guard without even consulting David Blatt.”

Griffin has evidently turned a deaf ear and a blind eye to all of this.

"It's such a ridiculous assertion,” he said of Blatt’s potential exit. “It seemed giving life to it is what would happen by talking about it so I didn't want to do that.”

The Cavs will likely turn things around (they won eight games in a row during a November/December stretch) but things aren’t looking pretty right now. James was recently diagnosed with a knee injury, and he’ll miss approximately four weeks as a result.

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