CLEVELAND — Reigning NBA coach of the year Kenny Atkinson is “not on the hot seat” with the Cleveland Cavaliers despite the team’s poor start, multiple league sources with direct knowledge of the franchise’s thinking told The Athletic.
This was the sentiment even before the Cavs snapped a three-game losing streak (and four-game home slide) by beating the Charlotte Hornets 139-132 on Monday night, though no one should necessarily feel better about this team just yet, either.
To be clear, decision-makers, coaches and players are “upset” with how the team has played for two months following last year’s 64-win season, but those frustrations have not risen to the level of Atkinson’s job being in imminent danger, those sources said. Atkinson is in his second season, having replaced J.B. Bickerstaff, who was fired despite guiding the team to better campaigns each year of his four-season tenure.
Additionally, Cleveland’s front office, led by president of basketball operations Koby Altman, is not in a hurry to overhaul the roster, even though the Cavs have the NBA’s most expensive collection of players (with a payroll of $229.8 million, they are the league’s only team currently over the second apron). Team executives want to see how it looks once all of the Cavs’ projected starters are on the court together, which has yet to happen this year.
To that end, at least two trade offers for rotation players were rejected by Cleveland, league sources said.
“The healthier we get, the better we’ll be,” Atkinson said before the Cavs avenged last Sunday’s loss to the Hornets, who are now 9-20. “I’m buying this dip. I know what we got comin’, and I love our leadership.”
There is another game Tuesday night, against the New Orleans Pelicans, but regardless of the outcome the Cavs will enter their first Christmas Day game since 2017 nowhere near where the casual fan expected them to be in the standings. Monday’s win put them at 16-14 and in seventh place in the Eastern Conference; if the postseason began today, they’d be a Play-In team. They started the season 7-3, which means even with a win against New Orleans, they’d limp into Thursday’s noon ET matchup at Madison Square Garden against the New York Knicks with a losing record over their last 21 games.
The simplest reason there has been such a dip would be injuries, but the reality isn’t so simple. It’s not just that starting small forward Max Strus has missed the whole season following summer foot surgery, or that reigning defensive player of the year Evan Mobley is going to be out for an extended time with a calf strain, or that All-Star point guard Darius Garland began the year in street clothes because of toe surgery, or even that starting center Jarrett Allen recently returned after missing nine games out of 10 with broken fingers or that Sam Merrill, the team’s top 3-point shooter, came back Monday night after 14 games missed with a severely sprained hand.
It’s all of those injuries combined, forcing Atkinson to give rotation minutes to at least two players who were not in the NBA at this time last year in Nae’Qwan Tomlin and rookie Tyrese Proctor, and a third (second-year forward Jaylon Tyson) who was not in the Cavs’ rotation last season. Larry Nance Jr., back for his second stint with Cleveland, is out with a calf strain now, but before he was injured was shooting 40 percent from the field and 30 percent from 3-point range. Lonzo Ball, a backup point guard the Cavs traded Isaac Okoro to the Chicago Bulls for, is not only shooting 25 percent from 3-point range, but his own struggles with health have been challenging for Cleveland to manage while Garland has been nursing a surgically repaired toe.
Injuries have knocked Cleveland off course. Sam Merrill, the Cavs’ top 3-point shooter, returned Monday after 14 games missed with a sprained hand. (Jason Miller / Getty Images)
The team’s troubles are of course by no means solely on the new guys. Garland has put together two solid games in a row, scoring 27 points with 10 assists against the Hornets after putting up 35 points in a loss to Chicago on Friday. But before that, he had been struggling with his shot and movement. He’s still shooting just 32 percent from 3-point range. De’Andre Hunter, the Cavs’ big acquisition at last year’s trade deadline who played the best basketball of his career in those two months in Cleveland, was in the middle of a precipitous drop in performance until he poured in 27 points off the bench Monday. Dean Wade, another veteran reserve forward, has seen a slight uptick in his defensive metrics from last season, but he’s shooting 29 percent from 3-point range.
Among the Cavs’ established stars, only Donovan Mitchell, the team’s biggest star, is performing above last year’s rate by most metrics. (He scored 30 against the Hornets, right at his average).
Entering Tuesday, the team ranked 27th in 3-point shooting and 14th in total defense. Cleveland’s 24 3s against Charlotte were a season high and the fifth-most in franchise history, but the Cavs still coughed up 132 points and 17 offensive rebounds.
Last year, the Cavs were No. 1 in offense, second in 3-point shooting, eighth in defense and had the healthiest team in the NBA while steamrolling to the East’s top seed for the playoffs.
“We didn’t crack any code tonight,” Mitchell said after Monday’s win. “We didn’t. This isn’t like a victory lap. This isn’t something where we’re like, ‘Yeah, you know, we’re back.’ No, we gotta do it again tomorrow and after that on Christmas, like, right then we got a big stretch coming up.”
Atkinson, 58, took the Cavs’ second-round playoff loss to the Indiana Pacers last spring hard and spent the summer reviewing every possession from that series to see where they went wrong. He can be demanding of his coaching staff and has asked more of players in spots, such as putting the ball in Mobley’s hands to start possessions earlier in the season (which the Cavs largely abandoned before Mobley’s injury) and preaching to all to crash the boards harder instead of getting back on defense.
But Atkinson has also remained positive with players, especially during this recent stretch when the boos were raining down from the rafters in brutal home losses to the Portland Trail Blazers, to a depleted Golden State Warriors lineup, to the Hornets and to the Bulls. Hunter said he appreciated that Atkinson approached him for a discussion about taking him out of the starting lineup and moving him back to the bench, while Mitchell said he and Atkinson are preaching the same thing to players in the locker room.
“This isn’t an easy stretch,” Mitchell said. “(Atkinson has) been through this when they won the championship in Golden State (as an assistant). I’ve been through this several times in Utah. Like, just continue to be a great leader, both of us. I tell myself continue to be positive because, if you tuck your tails and hang your head, like, that’s not going to get you anything.”
Asked how his interactions with the front office and Cavs ownership have been during Cleveland’s tough stretch (the team is owned by Dan Gilbert, and his son Grant is taking an active role, too), Atkinson said his bosses “couldn’t be more supportive.”
“From their point, it’s like, how can we help?” Atkinson said. “Those are the conversations we have. It’s a great atmosphere to work in, and we’re all pulling together. It’s not like, ‘Hey, you guys gotta do this, or coaches gotta do this, or the front office has gotta make trades.’ None of that. ‘How can we help each other?’
“I know that sounds corny, but those are the conversations we had over the last couple of days,” Atkinson said.
As a second-apron team, the Cavs are severely limited by league rules as to the kinds of trades they can make. It would be difficult to improve the roster this season, or even in one offseason, because of the restrictions on how they can make deals. But re-adding Strus to the lineup later this year would almost be like making a trade, and Mobley rejoining the fray next to Allen will give the Cavs back their two-big lineup that has been copied by several teams in the league. It would also reduce roles for Cleveland’s younger players and allow Merrill and Hunter to play big minutes off the bench.
If Garland can continue to round into form as his toe heals — he seemed to re-aggravate the injury in the fourth quarter Monday but stayed in the game — that would obviously be another huge boost.
Cleveland’s second season under Atkinson was always going to be defined by how much further the team could go in the playoffs. With such an expensive roster, the Cavs were always going to have to decide if the expense was worth it for this collection of players, or if they should seek flexibility for future runs this coming offseason.
No one in the organization was surprised the Cavs didn’t repeat their 15-0 start from a season ago, given the injuries to Strus and Garland coming into training camp. But home losses, bad defense, worse shooting and loud boos tend to bring some issues into view on an accelerated timeline.
The Cavs appear poised to avoid joining that particular race, for now, and are practicing patience.
“We’ve got to keep holding the fort,” Atkinson said. “We’ve just got to scrap some wins together here in these next few games. But … I think we’re trending positive, especially as those guys get healthier.”