National Basketball Association

Cavs' Blatt compares himself to a fighter pilot ... no, for real

Published May. 12, 2015 1:05 p.m. ET

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David Blatt has had a rough couple of days since the Cavs' dramatic win over the Bulls on Sunday.

After being called out by his superstar and saved by his assistant coach from a potential game-ending mistake, Blatt explained how much pressure an NBA coach has to face.

Only problem is the analogy he used.

"A basketball coach makes 150 to 200 critical decisions during the course of a game, something that I think is paralleled only by a fighter pilot," Blatt said.

This comes a day after probably Blatt's most trying moments in his coaching career.

In the postgame news conference, LeBron James, minutes after nailing a game-winning jumper at the buzzer, revealed that he scratched Blatt's play, which had LeBron inbounding the ball, with 1.8 seconds left. This is not the first time LeBron has superseded his rookie coach this season.

"To be honest, the play that was drawn up, I scratched it," James said. "I just told coach, 'Give me the ball.' We're either going to go to overtime or I'm going to win it for us. It was that simple.

"I was supposed to take the ball out," James continued. "I told coach, 'There's no way I'm taking the ball out, unless I can shoot it over the backboard and it goes in.' I told him, 'Have somebody else take the ball out, give me the ball, and everybody get out of the way.'"

Just moments before, Blatt had desperately tried to call a timeout, which the Cavs did not have, in the final seconds of Sunday's game, only to be grabbed by assistant Tyronn Lue before one of the refs saw the mistake. If one of the referees had seen Blatt's gaffe, it would have resulted in a technical foul and the ball for the Bulls.