By: Bryce Fields

After three years of triumph and glory in Cleveland, the Cavaliers have parted ways with head coach Tyronn Lue. During Lue’s reign with the Cavs, he was able to lead them to 128 wins as the head coach, going 50 games over the .500 mark. His winning percentage of .624 is the third highest mark in Cavaliers history. Not to mention that Coach Lue guided Cleveland to the franchise’s first NBA Championship in team history in 2016, cementing his legacy with the Cavaliers.

Except that almost no one believes that any of the winning, success, or the championship had anything to do with Lue. Most would attribute that to someone who may have had more influence on the team, being some former player named LeBron James.

Alright, I do not want to sit here and shit all over Lue’s tenure as the head coach in Cleveland, but come on now – how much did Lue really have to do with the Cavs winning? The obvious fact is that LeBron is one of the greatest basketball players of all time and was able to carry the team on his back the majority of the time. Accompanied by All-Star point guard Kyrie Irving, they were able to propel the Cavaliers to a NBA Finals win in 2016, which coincidentally were coached by Lue after the mid-season firing of David Blatt. Not saying that Lue had nothing to do with that, but having incredible stars in LeBron and Kyrie definitely helps.

Fast-forward to 2018, and you no longer have both of those guys in town. Kyrie jumped ship last season and forced a trade to the Boston Celtics, but the Cavs were still able to find a way to come out of the Eastern Conference playoffs and face the Golden State Warriors in the Finals. However, after being swept and losing back-to-back championships to the Warriors, LeBron left in free agency to the Los Angeles Lakers to pursue his dreams of…. well, we aren’t really sure yet.

So now you have coach Ty Lue, Kevin Love, first-round draft pick Collin Sexton, and Cedi Osman (?) as the focal point of the Cavaliers, and things are not going well. Cleveland is still searching for their first win of the year and are now 0-6 after their latest loss to the Indiana Pacers. Not only are they losing, but they are getting their asses kicked – they currently have team points differential of -12.8, bad enough for 29th in the entire league.

To be fair, just as I didn’t give him much credit for the success, I also don’t blame Lue for the losing this season. The Cleveland Cavaliers would suck with any coach at this point and Lue doesn’t deserve to lose his job as the babysitter of the rebuilding Cavs.

That being said – he never really deserved the job in the first place.