The shorthanded Cavaliers were eliminated from the postseason by Boston on Wednesday night. Following the second-round ouster, head coach J.B. Bickerstaff‘s position with the team is in “serious jeopardy,” league sources tell Shams Charania, Joe Vardon and Jason Lloyd of The Athletic.
Both The Athletic and ESPN’s Adrian Wojnarowski (Twitter link) state that Cleveland plans to take a few days to evaluate Bickerstaff’s job performance. Defeating Orlando in the first round marked the first playoff series the Cavs have won without LeBron James since 1993. And the front office “remains fond” of Bickerstaff, per Wojnarowski.
However, according to The Athletic, star guard Donovan Mitchell, who is eligible for a four-year extension this offseason, “did not have great confidence in Bickerstaff” throughout the season, and he was “not alone.” League sources tell The Athletic’s trio that a number of players have for months privately and publicly questioned the 45-year-old’s “strategies, game management, practice habits and accountability measures.”
“No one has told me I’m not (the coach), so I’ll keep showing up until they tell me not to,” Bickerstaff said when asked about his job status after Wednesday’s loss. “We’ve continued to build this thing the right way. Every single year we’ve improved, continued to get better. Play-In, playoffs.”
Following an overtime victory over Houston in December, which was the second game after Darius Garland and Evan Mobley went down with multi-week injuries, president of basketball operations Koby Altman “admonished Bickerstaff in front of his entire staff” for playing Mitchell 45-plus minutes, multiple sources tell Charania, Vardon and Lloyd. Mitchell played the entire second half and all but four seconds of overtime, the authors add.
“(Altman) got at J.B.,” one player said of the incident.
Evidently Altman was unaware at the time that Bickerstaff had asked Mitchell if he wanted a breather, and Mitchell said no. But the 26-year-old wound up missing the next four games with what the team referred to as a non-COVID illness, per The Athletic.
According to The Athletic’s trio, Bickerstaff makes approximately $5MM annually and is under contract through 2026. He holds a career regular season record of 255-290 (.468), including previous stops with Houston and Memphis.
Odd that this didn’t come out before the entire roster missed the elimination game…
Eh, I’ve seen Cavs fans say similar things in the weeks and months prior. Seems to track pretty well.
Yes it has been seeing it for months…
Coaches had short leashes before this new CBA made harder to upgrade rosters…
Coach roulette gonna be bigger than ever…
He did a terrible coaching last year, but he is comparable to Doc Rivers this playoffs
It’s not his fault this year
anyone ever notice bad franchises change coaches more often than most people change their hair style lol
You’d have a point if the Cavs had been a ” bad franchise” over the last few seasons.
So lebron was there scouting JB?
So now in the NBA you get fired for going 48-34 and losing in the playoffs to a vastly superior team? The league (other than the Spurs and Heat) is turning into a joke.
No hes not perfect but I dont understand how he’s on the chopping block when the team has only improved during his tenure and he has rarely had a fully healthy team to work with. And I ask the same question I ask when people want to get rid of their successful coach: who are you going to get that’s better?
Players seem to not like him. Including the star, who is free to sign elsewhere this summer.
As for who they can get..someone who the star player wants.
Welcome to today’s NBA.
Altman is worried about his job. Dan Gilbert always thinks he can find someone who can work magic. Remember Beilein? Or his attempts to lure Chauncy?
Actually, that 18-2 stretch early this year is the key. If that was for real, then you remodel the personnel to facilitate playing that style all the time.
If it was just a mirage (queue up Tommy James) then you are asking, is it the roster or the coach? Is there a trade that would dramatically upgrade faster than letting these youngsters mature? Is there some genius who could make the two-bigs/two mini-guards work?
The reason the Nuggets won last year is they kept their coaching staff. Who is out there proven to do a better job than Bernie?
I don’t know why anyone would want to be a head coach in the NBA anymore. Even if you win, you get fired. Just let the players do whatever they want.
Maybe for $5 Million?
Vogel I would assume
he did a fine job, they were playing the 1st seed and were missing their C, superstar, and SG… why would bro be fired for that
Agreed. Not Bickerstaff’s fault that Allen didn’t play at all against the Celtics plus Mitchell not playing in game 5. Unrealistic to think that the Cavs can beat Boston at Boston without both Mitchell and Allen.
I wonder if we can find out the specifics of why certain players don’t like bickerstaffs coaching? What is it exactly about his practice habits and other stuff that is so wrong?
It would be interesting because it seems like the team has improved and we need more continuity instead of changing the coaches like we change our socks.
It’s hard to know the dynamic within an organization when looking at it from the outside. As an owner, I’d certainly have some questions about a few things that occurred with this team this year, but I wouldn’t anticipate that all that much of it was attributable primarily to the coaching staff.
I think the Cavs should think hard about what they do. Not knowing the locker room scoop it seems like he did a decent job considering he missed 20 games from some key players this year in Mitchell, Garland, Moseby, Wade and Okorro. I did have some issues with hood short bench. I felt like wasted a year not developing Isiah Moseby and Emoni Bates. The only way I would definitely fire him is if Mitchell wants to stay but literally declares he doesn’t want JJ. But if not him then who?
Besides Spida and Mobley he had nothing to work with in the playoffs. Especially with Allen hurt. The pg is sloppy as you can be and the complimentary players are very inconsistent. The fact they hung with Boston before Mitchell was hurt should be a credit to him and the coach.