A number of reports say John Beilein is no longer coaching the Cavs, and a story from The Athletic details the "failed experiment," as the publication called it.
The story, with reporting from Shams Charania, Jason Lloyd and Joe Vardon, goes into a lot of detail, but one of the big takeaways is just how much Beilein's thug/slug comment made an impact in his eventual demise. If you don't remember, about a month ago ESPN reported Beilein was heard in a team meeting saying his players were playing like "thugs."
The coach later told ESPN he thought he said slugs.
"I didn't realize that I had said the word 'thugs,' but my staff told me later I did and so I must have said it," Beilein told ESPN in January. "I meant to say slugs, as in slow moving. We weren't playing hard before, and now we were playing harder. I meant it as a compliment. That's what I was trying to say. I've already talked to eight of my players tonight, and they are telling me that they understand."
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It initially appeared Beilein's players had gotten over the comment, but Wednesday's report from The Athletic tells a different story.
His tenure in Cleveland essentially ended during a film session on Jan. 8 in a Detroit hotel, of all places. That's when he called his players "thugs" during a film session. He insisted later he meant to say slugs, and he tried to apologize the next day, but a number of the players never really embraced his explanation. In fact, some of them thought it was an insult to their intelligence, one player told The Athletic.
"There was no coming back from that," he said.
Instead, multiple players began playing songs that included the word "thug" whenever Beilein was within earshot, sources said: Bone Thugz-n-Harmony’s "Thuggish Ruggish Bone" and Tupac’s "Thugz Mansion" among them. As the team boarded the bus a few days after the incident, one player was intentionally playing Trick Daddy’s "I’m a Thug" with Beilein a few feet away. Other players blasted songs with the word "thug" loudly during workouts in the facility. Players did this to make light of a very tough situation, according to one team source.
"The worst part to me was not owning that he said it," one player told The Athletic.
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While the fact a number of players were playing songs with the word "thug" in them is funny on the surface, the comment clearly rubbed some players the wrong way. The fact some "never really embraced his explanation" is a pretty big problem.
The story goes into more detail, but the overall summary is that players just never accepted Beilein as their leader. Another section of the story says players were turned off by his coaching style, and even said Beilein was "stunned by the culture of the modern NBA player."
This was simply not a good fit for Beilein, and it suggests he'll likely seek another college opportunity rather than remain in the NBA.
