Everyone in here talking about players stabbing him in the back, going to the media, not buying in, acting spoiled, etc…
That stuff is probably all true but the overarching issue is that he never got any buy in from his players. A college coach who doesn’t get buy in in his first year loses 20 games and has a bunch of transfers. He then recruits guys who buy in (by committing).
An NBA coach who can’t get his team to buy in is never going to be an NBA coach for very long.
I keep wanting to comment, but don’t even know where to start – this thing is a freakin’ Russian novel.
Seriously: You’ve got tragedy, a complicated hero with a tragic flaw (ambition) that’s maybe not a flaw, a laughable authority figure (literally famous for using comic sans; you can’t make this up), family drama involving fathers and sons (the Patrick situation), evil men (Kevin Love), righteous men (Juwan), old heroes (LeBron), foreshadowing (the tension with Poole last year, the many (many) previous failures of coaches moving from college to the NCAA), sacrifice (literally away from millions) and probably a ton of symbolism that I’m missing. We just need a hunting scene, a formal duel, a couple of troikas and a shitload of smelling salts so we can revive Tolstoy.
There is a parallel dimension somewhere in which Beilein stays and Howard is now coaching the Cavs and … I’m honestly not sure who’s happier or sadder or the same.
Lest we forget the irony that it was the Cavs job that Izzo was always rumored with…
Yeah…if Beilein’s style was too “authoritarian” for the NBA, I definitely want a view of that alternate universe where Izzo takes that job. But…perhaps to Izzo’s credit…perhaps he knew that style wouldn’t fly in the NBA.
Feels like a lot of this should be on Gansey. He knows Beilein and he knows the NBA/Cavs players. He was probably in a good position to guide him as to what he would have to change.
Hopefully Colin Sexton is excited about not having to play hard all the time now. Helluva franchise.
If there’s one thing Colin Sexton does do well, it’s playing hard.
This is one of the many things that has me so confused about how this could have happened like this.
“You know how he is, he is very detail-oriented and it’s detail, detail, detail,” Sexton said. “He loves details. And he always wants us to make sure that when we are out there, we are giving it our all. College coaches, you know how they are—they want you to go 1,000 percent every second of the day. He’s been in college for 20 years, more than that. We’ve had to tell him, like, ‘Coach, we’ve got 82 (games), we can’t kill ourselves.’”
So the player’s didn’t want to watch film…
“Players failed to retain basic, fundamental information delivered to them by coaches, and their revulsion to lengthy film sessions was foreign to him.”
And didn’t want to practice…
“Players missing practices and games for mild soreness, or for no other reason than winning was not the primary goal early in a rebuild.”
“But players not only complained about the work, they also were drilled in games by opponents who were clearly well-rested.”
Hmmm, sounds like a great culture 
Certainly agree, but how does anyone get buy in from guys who are over paid and don’t what to be in Cleveland. The cap is a freaking train wreck and Kevin Love was going to make this a shit show for any coach. John was just the next pawn in line to be played by a bunch of guys that cannot and will not bring any value to the club in the market.
Seriously, if you know John his character should never be in question based on what he has done over the entire body of work. You can’t coach Hollywood and that’s what the NBA is! The group of guys in Cleveland want a country club not a basketball coach.
They ain’t gone there to play school. So to speak.
Yeah, I have thought a little bit about Gansey or Brad Stevens (whom JB said he talked to on many occasions re:Pistons job and Cavs job)…very curious what approach they took in trying to guide JB, or whether John may be tougher than most when it comes to accepting help/advice.
I feel like the Cavs front office knew what they were getting in Beilein, and at least some were excited for the fundamentals approach. But it seems too obvious that the players themselves would never be fully on board for this to work.
To your point about Stevens, he was quite prescient regarding this outcome for JB, per the below quote, which was made when Beilein was considering the Pistons job. I do wonder if JB consulted him about what exactly great support meant and how to evaluate it.
“He’s done an incredible job. No doubt, he’s one of the best coaches at any level in the world,” Stevens said Tuesday on the Dan Dakich Show on 1070 AM in Indianapolis. “Like anybody else, if he makes the move to the NBA, it’s not about how good a coach he is; it’s about how supported he is.”
I could certainly see Izzo failing in this scenario (honestly just about every first year coach with that roster is doomed to fail) but the one thing with Izzo is for all the screaming and yelling he does at his players, they (usually) had his back. I don’t know if concern is the right word but I always felt like Beilein made players much better but I never felt like he had the relationship with his guys like Izzo did/does, despite the fact that Beilein seems so much more likeable than Izzo.
I’d say there is fault on both sides, and would put it like this:
Beilein needed to treat his players like adults. Looks like he didn’t.
The players needed to act like adults. Looks like they didn’t.
I am a huge (huge) Beilein fan, but this was a slow-motion train wreck from day one. It was literally like a nightmare – in the sense that you could see all the bad things happening in advance but were helpless to stop it.
Wow, great find Voltron.
there is a big difference btw Harbaugh and Beilein. Harbaugh was a NFL veteran with a very long playing career to speak about.
Harbaugh was extremely successful his first three years at SF. Only his fourth year went poorly, and that may have had a lot to do with a meddling front office that wanted him gone and made him a lame duck.
The only parallel I see is that Dan Gilbert is about as incompetent as Jed York. Every one of his coaches gets run out of town. Gilbert was incredibly lucky to have LeBron fall into his lap - and he still managed to lose him in free agency, twice!
Was there much Beilein could have done? Cleveland’s records the past decade when they haven’t had LeBron on the team:
2010-11: 19-63
2011-12: 21-45
2012-13: 24-58
2013-14: 33-49
2018-19: 19-63
2019-20: 14-40