Sunday wasn't exactly David Blatt's finest moment as head coach.
LeBron James bailed out the Cleveland Cavaliers with a buzzer-beating fadeaway to take Game 4 from the Chicago Bulls. With just 1.5 seconds left, James caught the inbound and promptly nailed the third buzzer-beating game winner of his playoff career.
But that wasn't the play Blatt had intended.
"To be honest, the play that was drawn up, I scratched it," James said after the game. "I told coach to give me the ball ... we were either going to overtime or I was going to win it for us. It was that simple."
James also said that Blatt's play originally called for James to inbound.
To have James inbound the ball would have been disastrous. There was only 1.5 seconds remaining on the clock, making it difficult to find James for a shot. Even if the intention wasn't to pass to James for the win, he still would have made for a deadly decoy had he been one of the four players on the floor.
Less than 10 seconds earlier, Blatt nearly lost the game for Cleveland by trying to call a timeout when his team had none remaining. Fortunately, assistant head coach Tyronn Lue managed to restrain Blatt before the referees could spot his blunder.
The battle over playcalling jurisdictions between James and Blatt has been a running theme this season. James openly admitted earlier this season that he calls many of his own plays, something Blatt said he was fine with.
