Cleveland Cavaliers head coach David Blatt is keeping his head up in defeat.
His team lost its final game of the 2014-15 season Tuesday, with the Golden State Warriors winning the NBA championship at Quicken Loans Arena, but Blatt was proud of what his team accomplished.
"I'm proud of everybody in our organization. Not every story has a happy ending," Blatt said. "Doesn't mean it's a bad story. This is a good story."
David Blatt says his players had the "best possible season that they could" and did "more than anyone could expect."
— CBS Sports NBA (@CBSSportsNBA) June 17, 2015
Blatt also addressed injuries to his All-Stars Kyrie Irving and Kevin Love:
Obviously, we would've loved to come into this series as a whole team. I feel badly for Kevin and Kyrie because they did so much during the course of the season to help us get here. We're not here without either one of those guys. And obviously having had them in this series, it would've been significant. But we never asked for sympanthy when they went down. We never made an excuse. And I certainly won't do that now. We played our hearts out. The Warriors were better. Those guys will get better and we'll come back after it next season.
Overheard words from Steve Kerr to David Blatt: "I wish you could've been healthy. You guys played so shorthanded." #NBAFinals
— Tas Melas (@TasMelas) June 17, 2015
The 56-year-old also spoke about LeBron James, who willed his team as close as it could possibly get against the juggernaut Warriors.
"(LeBron) was of great, great assistance to me in many, many ways, and it was an honor to coach him," Blatt said. "I thought he had one of the best seasons of his career."
In the end, as is so often the case in Cleveland, it wasn't enough.
Blatt on the Warriors going small with Iguodala: "That was a critical and a determining factor in this series. There’s no way around it."
— CBS Sports NBA (@CBSSportsNBA) June 17, 2015
