Truly, the Cleveland Cavaliers and their head coach John Bellein don’t get a lot of run these days on Get More Sports.
Right now they are 10-27 on they year. They have lost five games straight. Their roster is an interesting collection of veterans left over from their title run along with Collin Sexton, who is their leading scorer (18.5 points per game). Of course, none of this will get you much coverage on Get More Sports.
However, when your head coach calls you ‘thugs’ in a film session on an off-day; it will get you a post. Unfortunately that’s what happened when Bellein says he mistakenly said the word instead of ‘slugs’.
After stunning Cavs players in a film session with a verbal suggestion that they were no longer playing “like a bunch of thugs,” coach John Beilein later reached out to players individually to insist he meant to use the word “slugs.”
(via @wojespn) https://t.co/VXVKXmeGVa
— SportsCenter (@SportsCenter) January 9, 2020
As our buddy Woj at ESPN puts it:
Delivering the term thugs to a group of largely young African American men carries obvious racial connotations, and Beilein acknowledged to ESPN in a telephone conversation Wednesday night that he understood that.
He makes a good point. Here’s what Bellein said of the matter on Wednesday night.
“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. 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.”
Certainly, that’s cringe-worthy. I don’t know how the situation ends up – general manager Koby Altman was just hearing of the incident when the story broke. However, I hope the next post we do on the Cavaliers is a bit more enlightening.
It’s not a good time to be a Cavs fan.
