The Cleveland Cavaliers hot start continued with a blowout win over the struggling Golden State Warriors. Dave DuFour and Es Baraheni breakdown the win for the Cavs, the Warriors problems, and Joel Embiid’s best game of the season. Then, the Athletic’s Sam Amick joins the show to give some behind the scenes insight on Mike Brown’s firing in Sacramento, a potential De’Aaron Fox trade, and the latest on Jimmy Butler. Then, Es digs into the numbers to celebrate LeBron James’ birthday.Host: Dave DuFourWith: Es Baraheni, Sam AmickExecutive Producer: Andrew SchlechtAudio Producer: Grayson MoodySubmit your questions to The Athletic NBA Daily mailbag: https://www.nytimes.com/athletic/5939460/2024/11/25/nba-podcast-mailbag-athletic-daily/ Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.
What are the Cleveland Cavaliers doing right this season?
And our guys, Sam Amick and Anthony Slater, had this whole scoop over at The Athletic. So we got Sam on to talk to us about it today. Sam, I hope you're doing well. I know you're staying busy. You know, this is normally the doldrums, but we got a little bit of action happening. Can you break down the timeline on the firing of Mike Brown and just kind of give the general sense of why it happened?
Of course. Thank you for having me, guys. Happy holidays. Happy holidays. Juggling the day job with all this stuff. We put this tree out yesterday. Oh, no. It's time of year. The Kings put their head coach out the other day, if you happen to hear. The timeline, Dave. That loss to the Pistons, obviously, for the most part, was the final straw. They're up big late.
And by the way, everybody keeps glossing over the fact that Damanis Sabonis did not play. Kind of a big factor. But he's not playing because of an illness. Terrible ending to that game. A four-point play in the corner with De'Aaron Fox having an absolute boneheaded defensive decision.
And then this was a theme that continued Mike Brown's postgame press conference where he was pretty candid and cutting. And with his commentary on that play was the type of thing that, you know, kept getting everybody's attention. Mike being so publicly critical of the players.
But they, of course, didn't make the decision until the next day after the Kings practiced after, you know, there were social media pictures of Mike and De'Aaron talking at practice. My understanding, our understanding is that it's essentially the procedural delays are the reason that they didn't tell Mike that he was out earlier. You had people in different places.
You had meetings that had to take place. You had legalities, all of the above. It's not the first time a coach has been fired over the phone, but- Certainly it sparked a lot of support for Mike around the league with Michael Malone, putting the Kings on blast and Steve Kerr and, and, you know, people like that.
Oh, there's some real solidarity.
Anytime a coach gets fired, especially one like this.
I mean, he was just coach of the year, Sam. It's like a curse.
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