Cavs: Retaining Mike Gerrity should be a no-brainer move for John Beilein

The Cleveland Cavaliers have their head coach in place in John Beilein, and his top assistant coach in J.B. Bickerstaff, but the rest of Beilein’s staff will take time to fill out. One of those spots should go to Mike Gerrity, who has reportedly done a heck of a job for years for the organization and most notably, helped young players progress with their shooting in the 2018-19 season.

The Cleveland Cavaliers had a fairly long head coaching search, and it was good to know that general manager Koby Altman and the organization seemingly got their preferred candidate in former Michigan head coach John Beilein to steer the squad’s rebuild in the coming years, or, its “renaissance,” as Beilein reportedly coined it in his introductory press conference on Tuesday.

Along with that, the team and Beilein seemed to feel it hit a home run in having former Memphis Grizzlies and Houston Rockets head coach J.B. Bickerstaff join the organization as Cleveland’s long-term associate head coach for Beilein, who does not have any experience coaching at the NBA level.

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So from there, though, Beilein’s staff needs to be filled out, and for now, the no-brainer decision for the new Cleveland head coach in terms of an assistant that should be retained is keeping director of player development/assistant coach Mike Gerrity on board.

Gerrity, who played in the G-League (then it was the D-League), has reportedly been instrumental in the perimeter shooting development of young key players on the Cleveland Cavaliers in Cedi Osman, Collin Sexton, Larry Nance Jr., as Forbes’ Evan Dammarell pointed out recently.

Coming into last season, it you believed Sexton, who did not show a ton of three-point shooting promise (33.6% at Alabama, per Sports Reference), and was somewhat unwilling to pull those shots at the college level, would shoot over 40.0% from NBA range in his rookie year (he shot 40.2%, per Basketball Reference), I would’ve thought you were crazy.

Through tons of hard work at shooting deep balls both off the dribble and off the catch, though, Sexton did that, and closed the season especially strong from range, as KJG contributors have noted many, many times.

Before Beilein’s presser on Tuesday, you could even see Sexton working at shooting perimeter J’s, and who was he doing that with (courtesy of Basketball Insiders’ Spencer Davies)?

Ding! Ding! Ding!

Who is Mike Gerrity?

You guessed right, “Jeopardy James!”

Osman (on 4.9 attempts per game) and Nance (on 1.5 attempts per game) also shot a respectable 34.8% and 33.7% from three-point land (which is decent for the roller Nance is), and Gerrity clearly has helped both hone in their shooting form/release to allow them to be in better position to shoot effectively from deep consistently (let’s not dismiss that Kyle Korver reportedly aided Osman, too, though).

Playing off that, it was reported by Cleveland.com’s Chris Fedor in his most recent Twitter mailbag set of responses that Cleveland may have some of their “assistants/player development guys” from the previous staff “stick around.”

For now, as Dammarell mentioned, the Cleveland Cavaliers “are plenty familiar” with Dan Geriot, who I agree with Dammarell in that he should probably be retained as well due to his reported helping of Ante Zizic/Cleveland’s bigs last season in Geriot’s first season promoted to assistant coach/player development, in addition to assistants James Posey and Mike Longabardi (including Gerrity).

Posey, who seems to be a much better fit for a veteran/contending team, and Longabardi, who did not do a good job primarily running Cleveland’s defensive strategy the last few seasons (as we’ve often hit on), should not be brought back on Beilein’s staff.

Swinging back to Gerrity, who initially began his tenure with the Cleveland Cavaliers as an assistant video coordinator (h/t Amico Hoops’ Ashish Mathur) back in 2014 and (per Mathur) was the director of player development with Cleveland’s G-League affiliate, the Canton Charge, in 2016-17, he fits the incredible work ethic that Beilein, Altman, majority owner/chairman Dan Gilbert and so many others are looking for to set the example and build the right culture for Cleveland’s players in the coming years.

Along with that, given his track record, I believe that Gerrity could also positively impact the shooting of Cleveland’s two 2019 NBA Draft picks (which could feasibly be three, given J.R. Smith‘s unguaranteed contract situation combined with Gilbert’s continual willingness to spend to help the rebuild, as Fedor has often highlighted), and that provides even value for Beilein to have.

Perhaps Duke’s Cam Reddish, who under-performed in his one collegiate season as a shooter (with an effective field goal rate of just 45.9% and college three-point shooting clip of 33.3%, per Sports Reference) but has a high ceiling as a shooter both off the bounce and off the catch at the NBA level with his smooth release and reported 7-foot-and-a-half wingspan (per ESPN’s Jonathan Givony) could be a prime candidate for considerable improvement working with Gerrity if he’s drafted by Cleveland, who could feasibly consider selecting him with the fifth overall pick next month.

Keeping Gerrity as one of his assistant coaches/the director of player development next season should be an easy decision for Beilein, who needs to surround himself with assistants that get the most out of young players in a rebuilding situation.