Nardone: Is it time to fire Tyronn Lue yet?

“What is taking so long? The Tyronn Lue era is a complete bust in Cleveland. It is time they fired him.”

That is a factual statement to some members of the human species. To be fair, the rationale for all the hyperbolic tweets last night were based off some actual evidence. Longstanding belief within NBA circles is that a mid-season firing of a coach usually results in a huge lift during the first game of the new coach’s tenure. Saturday wasn’t exactly any of that for the Cleveland Cavaliers or Lue or LeBron James or anyone.

The game was the opposite. An abomination, actually. Watching the game, it was as if the Abominable Snowman and Big Foot had a baby, then made it play basketball. You know, provided the baby had no index fingers, didn’t know what basketball was, and were more concerned about speaking words after the game than doing anything of relevance in it.

All of which would help explain how awful the Cavs looked as they were beat by a weird Chicago Bulls team.

It was after the game where the fireworks truly began. Lue said the players were out of shape, players agreed, and everyone and their (respective) mothers pondered things which made more sense than expecting Lue to implement “his system” in a day.

Lue has even gone on record stating that he isn’t changing the system. He is simply going to do it better. Then again, he has also said he wants to play at a quicker pace. Something the recently fired David Blatt was firmly against. In fact, Blatt thought Cleveland’s 28th ranked pace was fine. So, I suppose Lue doesn’t actually want to run the same system at all.

That is a thing that will take time. Understandably so, too. We will see if Lue is afforded such a luxury as the benefit of the doubt, though. A luxury which has retroactively been awarded to Blatt by some for reasons lost on others.

It is also worth noting that Lue struggled with his rotations-the same area of coaching Blatt was often killed for. The first-time head coach had a good excuse, as players were asking out of the game because they weren’t used to the new pace Lue was trying to implement. Basically, despite originally saying the contrary, Lue wants to run a vastly different offensive system than Blatt. Hiccups are, and should, be expected along the way.

Essentially, what we have here is a first-time head coach wanting to change major aspects of his team’s approach — which is fine — except the goal posts have been moved on him without any reasonable thinking person acknowledging that they should.

Not only has the front-office altered what “success” would be for this season, as being first in the Eastern Conference simply isn’t good enough and only being at the same level as the Golden State Warriors seems to be what they want, but now Lue has to battle such a thing while implementing a new system in the middle of the season.

It’s a thing that would be like asking a doctor fresh into his/her residency to perform an open-heart transplant as well as another doctor who was successful in practice, yet not liked and not doing it as well as the board thought s/he should. Except now that the old doctor is gone, he’s beloved.

It is an odd twist. Lue also has to battle a slew of Blatt supporters in his wake. Apparently, unknown to most beforehand, the former head coach has a huge backing of random people. When you couple that in with the factual success he has had, while dismissing the less measurable but still real issues he presented, Lue is not only fighting against unrealistic expectations, but the “idea” of a coach who was fired to make room for his being the position he is in.

Honestly, this is a fight Lue is likely to lose. He’s currently pressured to achieve tasks this team isn’t built to reach, while fighting against the newly formed perception of a coach who was ran from the job, and will probably be the last head coach to be the man who “leads” a LeBron James still capable of carrying lesser teams to crazy heights.

Moreover, it is NBA Finals appearance for bust for Lue. Not only this season, but each one after. It could also be said, because it likely already has, that if he doesn’t win an NBA title that he’ll be viewed as some sort of failure. And all of this is ALREADY happening merely one game into his tenure as the new head coach.

Before any of this happened, though, Lue was a highly thought of, sure-to-be future head coach in the NBA. He isn’t undeserving of this spot. Whether or not the weird Blatt supporters agree with his firing, Lue’s performance shouldn’t be measured to the idea of Blatt, as the two are seemingly operating different types of regimes. Furthermore, it is only the “idea” of Blatt, as there’s little proof he made Cleveland better.

Outside of the system, Lue has quickly gone out of his way to be harsher to ALL his players. That’s in stark contrast to Blatt, who often times tried to tippy-toe around his star players in an attempt to fit in — while ostracizing the media for some reason.

The two couldn’t be more complete opposites from every end of the spectrum had the WWE devised a plot such as this. Like the WWE’s stories, too, a sense of unrealistic fanboy aspects have reared its ugly head rather early into this plot. You know, since all of a sudden David Blatt is the true reanimated corpse of Doc Naismith disguising himself as some sort of outsider.

Thing is, the two shouldn’t be compared moving forward. Point to Blatt’s success all people want, much of it was obtained despite his presence. Had it not, Blatt would still be the coach. The cruel reality of the situation is that numbers aren’t doing the Cavs justice for making a hard call. The easier thing for them to do would have been to play it safe, stay with Blatt, and see how the rest of the season played out. Not rock the boat and get hit with wild theories and crazy questions.

However, they knew a change was needed because Blatt and the players had a strained relationship that couldn’t be salvaged. Not matter how it plays out, the folks in Cleveland’s front-office should actually be applauded for taking a drastic measure in a place that it’s rarely done: first place in the conference.

No matter. Not to many on the outside. Tyronn Lue is going to battle the perception of the situation for the rest of the season, if not the rest of his NBA coaching career. Despite being in a near-literal no-win situation, Lue has been named the coach of a flawed team. But only in the sense that they’re not as good as the Warriors or the Spurs. Anything short of being them, beating them, and/or winning a NBA title will be met with more questions than reasonable takes.

To put it as simply as possible: Lue has to do more with Cleveland than Blatt did only because the former achieved relatively wild success thanks to the transcendence of LeBron James. With James becoming less transcendent as he goes, with the rest of the NBA becoming better and more plentiful of stars, everyone is mostly asking Lue to do things which are less realistic than asking an infant to dunk a basketball — but only after the hoop was moved to 12-feet.

No pressure or anything. I’m sure when he inevitably fails to reach the goals most people know aren’t tangible, Lue will be met with reason and not…

Who are we kidding? Where’s the “fire Tyronn Lue” takes?