The Cleveland Cavaliers’ post-All-Star break stretch
This past offseason, the Cavaliers made a bold move of signing Beilein to be their head coach. The thing with this move was that Beilein would become the oldest first-time non-interim head coach in the league’s history, per Dan Feldman of NBC Sports’ Pro Basketball Talk. This move wouldn’t last long and Beilein would step down as head coach during the All-Star break, as was mentioned.
Enter Bickerstaff. Bickerstaff would be named head coach and the Cavaliers would play much better under him. In the 11 games that he has been head coach, the Cavs went 5-6 with impressive wins over the Denver Nuggets, Miami Heat and the 76ers.
The Heat did not have Jimmy Butler and Tyler Herro, and the Sixers were sans Ben Simmons and mostly without Joel Embiid, but those and the Denver game still stood out as surprising victories, and the Cavs controlled the Philly game nearly the whole way.
Over this stretch, the Cavs have also seen massive improvements to their offense. During this stretch, the Cavs have been averaging 110.6 points per game, a near four-point improvement from their overall average. Also, during this stretch, they have shot 48.1 percent from the field and 36.8 percent from deep, good for fifth and 13th-best around the league, respectively.
The offensive improvements don’t stop there as they also rank seventh in assists with 26.6 per game and ninth in offensive rebounding with 10.7 per game, and were hitting their stride leading up the season’s hiatus.
Now, this is a small sample size and should be taken with a grain of salt but, it seems as if the Cavs may have found something in Bickerstaff. With an entire offseason in front of them, the Cavaliers could address some needs in the draft and in free agency. Although free agency they won’t be making splashes but might look into something with maybe the mid-level exception, which could be potentially of the $9 million variety, according to Cleveland.com’s Chris Fedor.
Bickerstaff’s creativity, as evidenced by even using Larry Nance Jr. some at the 3, could make for some fun/intriguing lineups and hopefully this leads to more wins next season. All in all, despite the craziness caused in this season, the Cavs have come away with some bright spots.
If they can make the right moves for the future, it could be looking up very soon for the Wine and Gold.