CLEVELAND, Ohio - Had the Cavaliers not just fired one coach, promoted another, and lost to the Chicago Bulls last weekend, some commentary from Tyronn Lue about what's not working between LeBron James, Kyrie Irving and Kevin Love might've made more noise.

Lue, who was speaking Saturday before his first game as coach, was talking about the time he spent coaching Boston's Big 3 of Kevin Garnett, Ray Allen and Paul Pierce as an assistant to Doc Rivers, said "it was late in their careers, so they had to win a championship now."

"With our young stars, with Kyrie and Kevin, they're young, so it's still about their brand and different things, it's just way different," Lue said.

If you're shifting in your chair, perhaps concerned that Lue, in one of his first acts as coach, went to the media to rip Irving and Love, relax. He apparently said the same thing in front of the entire team on Saturday, too.

"I talked to our team about, 'if you win, everybody's brand is better,'" Lue said Monday, before the Cavs beat the T'Wolves. "If you win as a unit, everybody gets credit for it. Just trying to keep instilling that in our guys because, you know, we still have a young group of guys. Just gotta keep instilling that message. If we win, everybody's taken care of, so that's the message."

Before we go any further here, remember that Cleveland is now 46-8 since Jan. 13, 2015 in games its Big 3 is in the lineup. That includes Monday night's 114-107 victory over the Minnesota Timberwolves, Lue's first as an NBA coach. James led the Cavs with 25 points and nine assists; Irving added 17 points and nine boards; Love was a little off with 11 points and six rebounds.

Forty-six wins in 54 tries is, well, pretty good. And yet, it's been readily apparent that the Cavs' Big 3 doesn't quite know how to play together. Cleveland wins on talent, not on team.

So Lue's answer to this problem is for Irving and Love to care more? His plan is most assuredly more deeper and nuanced than that; he wants to quicken the pace to create more mismatches in transition for Irving and get Love working more with the second unit to create more opportunities.

Lue speaks without a hint of animosity, ill will, or sarcasm. His critiques don't feel like critiques. They roll off his tongue with the ferocity of a Downy dryer sheet.

Yet he clearly feels Irving and Love have offered too much resistance to their roles with James. Had the Cavs not just dropped a bomb on the NBA world by firing David Blatt and promoting Lue, more people would've noticed what Lue had to say.

Lue also recounted an article he apparently read in which Dwyane Wade said the Heat's Big 3 of him, James and Chris Bosh wasn't going to work until Wade decided in Year 2 to defer to James. That's when the Heat won the first of two titles.

"You gotta think about that. That's real sacrifice for a guy who's won a championship, it was Wade country, and then have to turn the keys over to LeBron James when it was always your team," Lue said.

After Monday's win, Irving, who scored six of his points in the final period but finished shooting 7-of-18 overall, said "I think I got the gist."

He described with personal examples some of what Lue was referring to, that Irving was the best player, go-to player, and perceived leader on the Cavs before James' arrival. Same goes for Love in Minnesota, before he was traded to Cleveland.

"You're put in a position where you have to sacrifice and you know one way to play, you know that basically you go from leading a team to becoming part of a bigger role that's at hand," Irving said. "It took us a few months to get used to it."

James and Irving learned to co-exist last season, and Love was largely left to fill the role of the oft-ignored third wheel. This season, with Irving out until Dec. 20 because of knee surgery, it was James feeding Love and otherwise playing his own, usual game with Irving forced to catch up.

But since Irving returned, Love's averaging just 12.9 points and shooting 39 percent.

"Me and Kev will do a great job with adjusting to it, but our brands are the last thing we're worried about," Irving said. "If Kevin was worried about his brand, I don't think Kevin would've came back. And for me to sign here, it was for a legitimate reason and we have a bigger goal at hand that we want to accomplish. That's always coming first."

And where does James see himself within the context of Lue's comments?

"I could have a Big 8, I just want to win," James said. "I don't really care. I work every single day for this franchise and for this team and for Kev and for Kyrie to put us in a position to win."