No other franchise in the NBA has been surrounded by more speculation during these NBA playoffs than the Cleveland Cavaliers. As if it wasn’t bad enough that the Cavs were knocked out in convincing fashion by the Boston Celtics in the second round, Cleveland has really started to clean house moving forward starting with the firing of five-year head coach Mike Brown.

Even though many people believed that someone had to take the blame for another earlier exit in the playoffs by the Cleveland Cavaliers, the firing of Mike Brown was a bit surprising to some.

Over the last five seasons, Mike Brown has done nothing but improve the record of the Cleveland Cavaliers every single year. Despite the vast improvement of the Cavs over the years, Brown failed to produce an NBA title in his time in Cleveland and that was the deciding factor in his firing.

After the firing of Mike Brown, the Cleveland Cavaliers have been looking for an ideal replacement and the caliber of head coach that might convince LeBron James to stay with the team that drafted him first overall seven years ago.

Even though there have been plenty of names linked to the Cleveland Cavaliers open head coach job, only two names have stood the test of time in former head coach of the year Byron Scott and Michigan State Spartans Tom Izzo.

Despite Byron Scott being a viable option, especially now, the Cavs put all their efforts into signing Tom Izzo and actually offered him a contract that would double his current salary at $30 million dollars over five years.

This was such a tempting offer for Izzo that he had to think about it for at least a week before making the decision to ultimately stay with the Michigan State Spartans.

Tom Izzo did say that the increased salary was very tempting, but the franchise really didn’t know which way it was headed in terms of the future (LeBron James).

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