Head coaches of NBA teams, particularly those gunning for the championship, are always on the hot seat. Success brings eternal glory, but failure means more often than not, they’re the first in the line of fire. When Tyronn Lue was appointed the boss of the technical area at the Cleveland Cavaliers, he felt jittery, and that was despite his good relationship with the star of the squad.
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Lue was in uncharted territory, but had familiar faces around him. He already had a friendship with LeBron James, and consequently, was on good terms with his business partner, Maverick Carter, and agent Rich Paul. Lue spoke about that friendship and his troubles on a recent podcast appearance with Shannon Sharpe.
Lue didn’t become the Cavs’ head coach out of the blue. He was an assistant between 2013 and 2014, and then became the associate head coach, before taking over the reins midway through the 2015/16 season after David Blatt got fired. His task? To dethrone the unstoppable Golden State Warriors team.
“I had a relationship with LeBron, Rich, and Mav, Randy [Mims] before, even when I came to be the assistant. We’ve always been cool and tight, so we always had that bond. When I became an associate, he came back,” Lue revealed.
Lue even joked that he was so close to the group that making Bron angry was never an issue. Paul and Carter would back him up. But it wasn’t Bron he was afraid of. It was coaching a talented team that had title aspirations but were falling short of the high-flying Warriors team led by an MVP-level Stephen Curry.
“When I took over, I was scared, because anybody can say, ‘I could have been this, I could have done that’, especially that social media sh**,” Lue continued. “You can say all that until you’re in that number one seat. Moving over six inches [to the head coach’s chair] is tough, especially midway through the season.”
“I just thought it was a lot of pressure, man,” the current Clippers coach added, before reminiscing about the 2015 Finals loss, in which Kevin Love and Kyrie Irving were missing in the all-important Game 6 clash. “If we don’t get to Finals, if we don’t get to at least game seven, I’m a failure.”
Thankfully, Lue was anything but that. The Cavaliers made their way to the Finals, where they came back from 3-1 down to beat the Warriors in seven games, marking one of the most remarkable comebacks in NBA Finals history.
