Cavs likely getting long-term HC makes start of next season less rocky
By Dan Gilinsky
The Cleveland Cavaliers seem to be doing their due diligence in their head coaching search, and when they do make that likely long-term decision, it should ensure next season starts out much more straight-forward.
The 2018-19 season did not go according to plan for the most part for the Cleveland Cavaliers.
They started the year 0-6, reportedly fired former head coach Tyronn Lue, and then former head coach Larry Drew (who eventually took over from being one of Lue’s assistants) and the team struggled through most of the year due to injuries and other problems, despite showing flashes of promise, especially post-All-Star break, en route to finishing with a rough 19-63 record (per NBA.com).
More from Opinion
- Regrading the Donovan Mitchell-Lauri Markkanen trade
- Seat Index: Rating the 9 NBA head coaches in danger of being fired
- What would a successful 2023-24 look like for Cavaliers’ Ty Jerome?
- A crucial year in The Land: 3 bold predictions for the Cavs this season
- How many teams from the Cavs’ Central Division will make the playoffs?
Looking forward to the start of the 2019-20 season, the Cleveland Cavaliers should have operations be much smaller.
No, I wouldn’t expect the squad to start off racking up a bunch of wins, but with general manager Koby Altman and company likely landing their longer-term answer (or at least what would be intended to be that person) as the next Cavs head coach by the start of next season, the team should be more locked in.
With the way last season started with Lue getting fired at the very beginning of the year and with Drew coming in, and with the team seemingly not knowing if they are attempting to be postseason contenders or trying to develop young pieces and let guys gain experience to begin a full-rebuild, it had to have been really hard initially for the players to be fully engaged.
To his credit, Drew did seem to keep the team together, based on reports from the local media, but it couldn’t have been an easy situation to have to deal with right away.
However, during the second half of last season, as we’ve often detailed, players such as Cedi Osman, Collin Sexton, and Ante Zizic (along with a few others) played much better, and seemed more comfortable with the Cleveland Cavaliers realizing that they were then fully-invested in initiating their full-rebuild and letting young pieces develop in-game.
Must Read. Cavs: Altman is right in saying Love's a part of near future, too. light
Now with Drew and the Cavs reportedly mutually parting ways, per The Athletic and Stadium’s Shams Charania, however, a more long-term answer should allow operations to begin next season off on the right foot, as opposed to last year.
For now, it’s been reported by ESPN’s Adrian Wojnarowski that the first two candidates that will be interviewed in this head coaching search by Altman and company will be Jamahl Mosley, a Dallas Mavericks assistant coach, and Juwan Howard, a Miami Heat assistant coach.
Along with that, according to Sam Amico of Amico Hoops, Alex Jensen, an assistant coach for the Utah Jazz, and Jordi Fernandez, an assistant coach for the Denver Nuggets, are two names that will definitely be in the discussion for the Cavaliers’ next head coach, too, and Amico would actually go on to say that Jensen and Fernandez are “near the top” of Cleveland’s “extremely early favorites,” for the position, by the way.
The Cavs and Altman will, and should, take their sweet time in their head coaching hiring process. With the team now understanding that they are years away from feasibly making the Eastern Conference Playoffs, and with Cleveland now seemingly focused on continuing to develop younger pieces, finding the right long-term head coach for the near future is so important.
It seemed unclear if the 61-year-old Drew would be on board with continuing to coach in this full-rebuild, and who can blame him?
Next. The Cavs should extend Thompson, and wait on extending Clarkson. dark
With Cleveland hopefully landing their long-term head coach this offseason, it should make the team and the players ready to roll right away, without a head coaching change right as the season begins like last year, and ideally, for a long time. With that better direction to start the year, I would think the team doesn’t start 4-17 in October and November, like they did last season (per NBA.com).