3 ways J.B. Bickerstaff can have a successful first full year with the Cavs
By Zane Harris
No. 2 way for Bickerstaff to have a successful first full season as Cleveland Cavaliers head coach: Establish a winning culture
The second thing that J.B. Bickerstaff must do to have a successful first full season with the Cleveland Cavaliers as their head coach is to establish a winning culture. While it is very uncertain that the Cavs will be a playoff team, the streak of being a top lottery pick for yet another year must come to an end.
The Cavs have the pieces to finally break out of being a top lottery pick this coming season and even if the team still misses the playoffs, even ending the season anywhere between the ninth and 11th seed in the Eastern Conference is something that could be seen as getting off to a good start.
Bickerstaff during his time as the Cavs head coach has shown that this could even potentially happen. He had a 5-6 record with the Cavs which featured wins over very quality teams like the Miami Heat, the Philadelphia 76ers and the Denver Nuggets.
If he can continue this and establish a winning and close-knit culture around the Cavaliers, it could be enough to get Cleveland back interested in the Cavs again after the major drop off in attention the team has received after LeBron left in free agency in 2018. That’s seemingly been the case, by and large from a general sense, in comparison to the Cleveland Browns in that span, or the Cleveland Indians, for instance.
With the young pieces already in place, if Bickerstaff can revamp the way that the Cavaliers franchise is viewed around the league, it could be enough to even convince a star player to bear the cold Cleveland winters to be a part of the system that he creates.
With Cleveland being one of the toughest places to convince a big name player to sign, establishing a great culture around the organization is something that is crucial to land a player of that caliber down the road.