Cleveland Cavaliers hire Greg Buckner as an assistant coach

The Cleveland Cavaliers have reportedly hired Greg Buckner as an assistant coach.

The Cleveland Cavaliers seem to have a solid coaching staff at this point, when looking at their current situation heading into the 2020-21 season.

Assistant coaches such as Dan Geriot and Lindsay Gottlieb appear to have really aided Cleveland from a player development standpoint as key assistants for Cleveland, as well as Cavs director of player development/assistant coach Mike Gerrity.

And it seems to me that the Cavs have their long-term answer at head coach in J.B. Bickerstaff, who took over in that role post-All-Star break last season for John Beilein, who then stepped down from that role and has an unspecified role within the Cavaliers organization.

Clearly, Bickerstaff is a head coach that Cavaliers players are particularly drawn to/have a great relationship with, and though it was only a small sample with him in that role, Cleveland having a 5-6 record post-All-Star break with Bickerstaff in that role was encouraging. As was Cleveland having the league’s sixth-best assist rate and the squad being 10th in effective field goal shooting percentage in that span.

Unfortunately, shortly thereafter, the NBA’s 2019-20 season would go into a novel coronavirus-induced hiatus, and the season would ultimately end for Cleveland, a non-Orlando area bubble team.

Anyway, for the Wine and Gold, though, an assistant coaching role was vacant after Bickerstaff moved from associate head coach to head coach, and that role was filled recently. Per a report from Cleveland.com’s Chris Fedor on Monday, the Cavs hired Greg Buckner as an assistant coach.

Buckner and Bickerstaff have worked together previously, and will again on the Cavs.

In the aforementioned report from Fedor, he referenced how Greg Buckner and Bickerstaff have worked together before, previously on the Houston Rockets and then the Memphis Grizzlies.

Bickerstaff was an assistant coach, then an interim head coach with Houston in 2015-16 and then eventually a head coach for two seasons with the Grizz in 2017-18 and 2018-19 after being their associate head coach/interm head coach (for a bit).

Here was what Fedor alluded to, though.

"“Buckner, who played 10 years in the NBA, began his coaching career in player development with the Houston Rockets in 2011, where he first worked alongside Cavaliers head coach J.B. Bickerstaff. Following three seasons in that role, Buckner was elevated to assistant coach until 2016. Eventually, he joined Bickerstaff in Memphis, getting hired as an assistant shortly after Bickerstaff earned the Grizzlies’ interim head coaching gig in late 2017.”"

I get where the Cavs/Bickerstaff were coming from here, with the Bickerstaff-Buckner prior relationship. In terms of what I’d imagine Buckner could provide for the Cavaliers, in particular, it’s how he could potentially aid the young guards’ on the defensive end.

Buckner was a solid perimeter defender in his NBA career with the Dallas Mavericks, Philadelphia 76ers, Denver Nuggets, Minnesota Timberwolves and Grizzlies, primarily in a rotational role. I’d imagine that aided players on Houston in 2011-12, when he was a player development coach for them, and in his assistant coaching stints with them in 2014-15/2015-16 and on Memphis in 2018-19.

Moreover, Buckner could help young Cavs players such as Darius Garland, Collin Sexton and Kevin Porter Jr. in their development defensively on the perimeter. Buckner, who had career averages of 5.0 points and 2.8 rebounds in 19.1 minutes per game, was not a key offensive player in his minutes-share, but defensively, he often made his presence felt.

In any case, as Fedor hit on, with how each Cavs assistant “moved over one seat,” in the time in which Bickerstaff took over at head coach leading into the hiatus/the eventual end of 2019-20, that was a temporary move. Buckner’s hiring is, as was what the Cavaliers were looking for, conversely, “a permanent option.”

We’ll again see if Buckner can help Sexton, Garland, Porter and company next season.

For the NBA, the start of the 2020-21 season is around the corner on Dec. 22, and training camp for the Cavs and other clubs are set to begin on Tuesday, Dec. 1.