Things aren’t going well for the Cleveland Cavaliers this season. They’ve been the most disappointing team in the league this season. Their record is now 15-14 after their last five losses have come against
teams they have better records than. This includes two straight losses to the Chicago Bulls.
Losing comes with consequences. There’s a lot of blame to go around as to why the Cavs haven’t exactly lived up to expectations this season. That includes the coaching staff. According to NBA insider Marc Stein, head coach Kenny Atkinson could be on the hot seat.
Virtually every team I’ve checked in with on the ground in Central Florida brought up the same subject first: Cleveland’s winter of discontent.
I’ve been hearing rumbles in coaching circles for weeks, amazingly, that pressure is indeed mounting on Cavaliers coach Kenny Atkinson, but I frankly struggled to believe such chatter. Atkinson, after all, is the NBA’s reigning Coach of the Year and is only in his second season on the Cavaliers’ bench.
Even though Atkinson may be the one getting the blame, Stein also brought up the possibilities of a roster shakeup.
“It is often said of the Cavaliers that trade inquiries for Donovan Mitchell or Evan Mobley will be immediately swatted away,” Stein said, “but Garland, Jarrett Allen … and even Atkinson? How safe are they?”
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There’s also the wildcard element that chairman Dan Gilbert is “unhappy” and could be getting more involved in basketball operations, according to Chris Fedor of cleveland.com.
Understandably, no one within the organization is pleased with the results so far. Figuring out how to fix that is much more difficult. The Cavs being in the second apron makes completing trades more complicated than they otherwise would be.
Additionally, they haven’t gotten a good look at how the team looks when healthy. Their core for of Garland, Mitchell, Mobley, and Allen have only played 127 possessions together according to Cleaning the Glass and are outscoring their opponent by 25.9 points per 100 possessions when they do share the floor (100th percentile). Based on that small sample size — and how that quartet played together last season — the issue so far hasn’t been that the core group isn’t playing up to their potential. It’s that they haven’t had enough time sharing the court.
The trade deadline is six weeks away. We’ll see if the Cavs make any moves to the roster or coaching staff before that time.
