The Cleveland Cavaliers have a new head coach, hiring Golden State assistant Kenny Atkinson to replace J.B. Bickerstaff. We also say we cannot judge a coaching hire until the person actually coaches games, but we like the hire.
Atkinson first got our attention when the Cavs acquired the Nets’ first round pick in the Kyrie Irving deal. The Nets were coming off a 20-62 season under Atkinson in 2016-17, so the Nets’ pick looked to have potential to have a very good chance to finish high in the lottery.
This was a Nets’ team led by DeMarre Carroll, Allen Crabbe, Spencer Dinwiddie. And yes, Caris LeVert and Jarrett Allen were on that squad as well. Brooklyn finished 12th in the Eastern Conference at 28-54 and as we all know by now, Cleveland got the 8th pick in the draft, not the top five selection that was hoped for.
The following season, he guided the Nets to the playoffs with a 42-40 record, losing in a five-game series to Philadelphia, who were led by Joel Embiid, Jimmy Butler, and Ben Simmons (ironically, new Laker coach J.J. Redick was also on the Sixers’ roster).
Brooklyn stole game one on the road behind D’Angelo Russell’s 26 points and LeVert chipped in with 23.
The following season, the Nets and Atkinson parted ways during the truncated pandemic season after he guided Brooklyn to a 28-34 record. Jacque Vaughn finished the year 7-3 and was swept in the first round of the playoffs by Toronto.
We went through this history because from afar Atkinson always seemed to get the most out of his roster, a good trait for any coach.
Atkinson was offered the Charlotte head coaching position following the 2022 season, and he took it, but then had second thoughts and settled for an assistants’ job with Golden State. Based on the mess the Hornets’ organization is, we thought he took the Warriors’ job as the heir apparent to Steve Kerr. Obviously, Kerr is still there.
There have been attempts on other sites to quantify Atkinson’s coaching style and philosophy, but we will not attempt that. The essence of coaching is looking at the talent at hand and getting the most out of the players. So, we will trust that his coaching philosophy with the Cavs will be based on having players do what they do best.
We also like that Atkinson has been a head coach before and then went and worked with another organization, especially a successful one like Golden State (like it or not, they are successful). Good coaches also learn and absorb things by working with players and also observation.
Many successful people learn from doing a job and as they do it more, they get better at doing it.
The new coach likes ball movement on offense, and we would hope he isn’t as dependent on the pick and roll as Bickerstaff was. As far as anything else goes, we will wait until we see the results.
And hopefully, the front office has discussions with Atkinson and what kind of team he wants, and is not saying here’s the roster, win with it. As we have been saying, the Cavs’ problem wasn’t just the coach. The make-up of the roster isn’t that of other contending teams.
We guess we will know more about the next edition of the Cavs in a few weeks.
Cleveland Sports Perspective 