CLEVELAND, Ohio -- LeBron James changed everything.

Remember that as you read my account of what happened to coach David Blatt, who was fired by the Cleveland Cavaliers on Friday.

James is 31. The Cavs believe he has several good years left. But they also know that each season with James must have an urgency to win a title right now.

From the moment James returned, the pressure was on general manager David Griffin to assemble the best team possible. First-round picks were traded. Veterans were added.

Money was spent. Was it ever. The current $110 million payroll is second highest in NBA history. It also carries $65 million more in luxury tax.

No one believes James is going to leave in the near future, but his "1-and-1" contract allows him to become a free agent each summer. Without saying a word, the contract delivers this message: James came home to win a title ... ASAP!

THE BACKGROUND

Blatt was headed to the Golden State Warriors as an assistant to Steve Kerr when the Cavs asked to interview the highly-regarded European coach in June of 2014.

Owner Dan Gilbert wanted a variety of coaches to consider. Griffin talked to several candidates. Some were very casual discussions. The final three were:



1. The Veteran: Alvin Gentry, who had been a head coach in Phoenix and three other NBA teams. At the time of his interview, he was an NBA lifer. He coached the Suns when Griffin was assistant general manager. The two men have a good relationship. At the time of the interview, Gentry was 59.

2. The Kid: That was Tyronn Lue, considered the young, hot coaching prospect. He was a Doc Rivers assistant in Boston and with the Clippers. At the time of the interview, he was 36 and had never been a head coach.

3. The Outsider: David Blatt had just won the Euroleague League title with Maccabi Tel Aviv, considered a huge upset. He had coached all over the world, except in the USA. He grew up in Framingham, Massachusetts. He played at Princeton. But his pro career was overseas. He was 55 at the time of the interview.

Gilbert went with Blatt, who wasn't hired with James in mind. He arrived June 20, 2014, three weeks before James decided to return. Yes, the Cavs knew they had a chance to entice James, but they were not sure it would happen. Not at all. They wanted Blatt in place before the 2014 draft, in which they had the No. 1 pick.

The fact that they picked Andrew Wiggins indicates they were not sure of James' intentions. A 6-foot-7 small forward/shooting guard, Wiggins played the same position. Blatt told me as much not long after James returned. He said the Cavs would have looked to deal the No. 1 pick or perhaps take someone else if they had known James was on the roster.

During the draft, the Cavs thought the most likely scenario for the 2014-15 season was Blatt growing with a young team whose core was Kyrie Irving, Tristan Thompson, Wiggins and Anthony Bennett.

Meanwhile, Gilbert tried to convince James to come home. The Akron native announced his decision on July 11, 2014. Soon, Griffin was in talks with Minnesota team president Flip Saunders and made the Kevin Love/Wiggins deal that involved three teams and other players, including Bennett.

THE ADJUSTMENT

It didn't take long for the Cavs to realize it would take longer for Blatt to figure out the NBA than originally thought. He was the first head coach who had never been at least a former NBA player, college coach or NBA assistant. He knew little about the nuances of the league.

He coached 40-minute games, not 48. International competition has fewer timeouts. The lane is shaped slightly different, the 3-point line is a little shorter. Even fouling out was different. It was five personals in the international game, six in the NBA.

The control that a coach has in the international game is enormous. He is his own general manager, bringing in players. There are no superstars, at least compared to the NBA. As one executive who has scouted the game overseas for years told me, "The guys usually do what the coach tells them to do, especially if it's a winning coach."

Blatt was considered a tough, sometimes volatile coach in Israel and Russia, his last two stops. He was the same way in the 2014 summer league with the young Cavs. But that changed once the regular season began.

It's unfair to say Blatt was intimidated by having James and the other NBA stars on his roster. But he clearly walked and talked softly. He probably was trying to ease into the situation, knowing the players had major doubts about him.

No coach in NBA history ever faced such culture shock.

THE FIRST SEASON

Griffin realized Blatt was put in a tough spot. It's why he resisted the temptation to fire him when the Cavs were off to a 19-20 start. Instead, he made the deals for Timofey Mozgov, J.R. Smith and Iman Shumpert. The Cavs finished strong. They entered the playoffs with a 53-29 record. They swept Boston in the first round, but Love suffered a major shoulder injury and was finished for the playoffs.

Blatt had a coach's nightmare in Game 4 of the Chicago series. He tried to call a timeout when he had none left. It was Tyronn Lue who stepped in front of Blatt so the officials could not see it. Blatt also botched an inbounds play, and James overruled it. He took the winning shot and made it.

From that point on, the Cavs were a different team. They became very rugged defensively. They won the final three games of the Chicago series and wiped out Atlanta in four games.

But those final seconds of Game 4 in Chicago raised doubts among some of the players about Blatt handling the playoff pressure. It also made him an easy target for the national media. He was given little credit for pulling the team together. They carried a seven-game winning streak into the Finals, before losing to the Warriors in six games. They did so while dealing with several key injuries to players.

Rather than being praised for allowing Lue to be defensive coordinator and have the freedom to make some substitutions and develop strategies, the media portrayed it as a sign of weakness.

THIS SEASON

The Cavs thought Blatt would be more confident and more demanding of the players. But he was not. There was a sense that he was reluctant to challenge James and others. Yet, some of it was simply picking on a guy who had no real friends in the NBA -- no one to grant him the benefit of doubt.

Blatt was still The Outsider in the eyes of many of his players. Yet, the team kept winning.

Griffin was concerned. In his press conference, he outlined the reasons. He felt the team lacked cohesion. He thought the players were not being held accountable at times. Defensive assignments were missed. Plays drawn up in the huddle were ignored.

Perhaps Blatt didn't feel empowered enough to challenge the players, and not just James. Yet, the Cavs were on pace for a 60-22 record when Blatt was fired.

THE DECISION

Monday's loss to Golden State really hurt Blatt with the front office, and not just because the score was 132-98.

J.R. Smith showed up only an hour before the game, which is considered late. At his press conference, Blatt said he wasn't aware of that. Perhaps he was covering up for Smith, or perhaps he really didn't know. Either way, it came across as if he was not on top of what was happening in the locker room.

The Cavs looked utterly lost when Golden State went to a quicker pace and a smaller lineup. The players thought preparation could have been better.

Yet the organization had concerns about Blatt even before that night. The team was winning, but mostly on raw talent as the front office saw it.

Remember all the money spent. Remember the pressure to win now. Remember the fear of an opportunity wasted if the Cavs didn't do everything possible to win a title this year.

Griffin felt all that and more. He had stats showing that 50 teams had a .700 or better winning percentage at the midpoint of the season since 2000-01. Only eight won a title.

Griffin believed the Cavs would win a ton of regular-season games, but not be fully prepared for the playoffs. He had to convince Gilbert to make the decision. Griffin didn't need to talk to the players, he had been around the team. He believed they had more respect for Lue than Blatt. It wasn't just James, although the Cavs star clearly favored Lue.

If the Cavs had failed to win a title this season, the front office would always have wondered if the outcome would have been different if they had changed coaches.

Fair or not, they had lost faith in Blatt.

THE FALLOUT

The Cavs hired Lue knowing that he was an alternative if the Blatt experiment failed.

Griffin is convinced Blatt can be an effective coach with a younger team, the one that he was indeed hired to originally guide. Blatt certainly deserves another chance with another NBA team, because he will have learned so much here.

Trying to win a title in the desperate climate of a championship-starved city with the national media scrutinizing the team is an unusual and difficult setting for any coach. As I wrote when Blatt was fired, any coach who has James is in a situation where he is likely to be blamed if a championship isn't delivered. It has been like that since James was in high school.

Griffin did not want players using Blatt as an alibi when things went wrong, and that was happening. So Blatt was fired with an 83-40 record, his .732 winning percentage being the best of any coach ever fired so quickly. Dallas coach Rick Carlisle called the firing "an embarrassment."

The Cavs believed they just couldn't wait for Blatt to adapt or the players to fully accept him. Griffin wanted Lue to have at least half of the regular season to establish himself. He has never been a head coach at any level.

At the start of this season, I went through a list of NBA coaches. Only three of 30 have been with their current team for at least five years. Only eight of 30 had made it three years. It's now seven with the firing of Houston's Kevin McHale.

So we'll see if the Cavs did the right thing by firing Blatt. Only winning a title will deliver a definite answer.