Snubbing of ‘Z’ Has James Unhappy

Even though the Cavaliers are off for a few days as they prepare for Wednesday night’s game against Phoenix, there was some interesting news coming out of the Cavaliers training facility. For the first time I can remember LeBron James has spoken out against a move of his coach.

In an interview given today, James openly criticized coach Mike Brown for not playing Zydrunas Ilgauskas on Saturday night. The next game Big Z plays will give him the record for games played as a Cavalier, breaking former Cav, and current Cavs GM, Danny Ferry’s club record. Here is the complete story from Cleveland.com.

Brown stated after the game, and again today, that his decision to play a smaller lineup was in response to the lineup used by Mavericks coach, Rick Carlisle. The smaller lineup was effective, as the Cavaliers had probably their most complete game of the season, in defeating Dallas.

The problem is that Ilgauskas fully expected to play (and there is no reason why he wouldn’t since he had played in every game of the season up until then), and had family and friends in attendance at the game to help him celebrate. After the game, Ilgauskas was upset at inexplicably being held out of the game.

James then came out today and voiced his support of Z and thus his lack of support for his coach in the decision to sit Ilgauskas. You have to agree with James. Z had started the previous few games and could have easily started. The game also was in hand with about four minutes left in the game, so even putting Ilgauskas in during “garbage time” would have allowed the much deserved celebration to have occurred within his family and friends present.

You have to like James’ support of his teammate, and as he said, his friend. At the end of the day will this hurt the Cavs? Probably not. The one thing you can pretty guarantee though, is that on LeBron James Bobblehead night on Wednesday, the Cavaliers fans and Ilgauskas are pretty much assured of being allowed the opportunity to celebrate Zydrunas’ accomplishment…..albeit one game later than it should have occurred.

Tags: Danny Ferry, LeBron James, Mike Brown, Zydrunas Ilgauskas