Is Cavs head coach J.B. Bickerstaff the right person for the job?

A tale of two Cavs head coaches

I have reminisced before on this Cavs franchise and sometimes compared what the Cavs are trying to accomplish now to what the Cavs were building back in the late 1980’s. Back then the Cavs had brought in a young, more accomplished head coach in Lenny Wilkens, from the old Seattle Supersonics team.

When Wilkins coached in Seattle, beginning in 1978, he took a seemingly lousy team that was well under the .500 mark (5-17) at the time and took and guided them to the NBA Finals that year and then won the NBA Finals the following season in 1979.

When Wilkins came to Cleveland in 1986, the team struggled that first season, but by year two, they were above the .500 mark, and in year three, of Wilkens’ tenure, they were in the playoffs.

That playoff season in 1989 was where the favored Cavs got beat by “The Shot” and Michael Jordan of the Chicago Bulls. Cleveland competed for the NBA title a couple more times in Wilkens’ remaining time with the team, but never got that elusive championship. In seven seasons with the Cavaliers Wilkins had a 316-258 record.

As I recognize that time was a while ago, and times have changed a bit in the NBA, and head coaches were probably given more time back in the day, but I still come back to Bickerstaff and what does he bring to this team now? More importantly, what will he bring to the team in the future that should have us all over the top in love with him and thinking he’s going to get the Cavs back into a successful run of seasons and the NBA playoffs?

When Bickerstaff took over the team at what turned out to be the very tail end of that 2019-20 season there was a lot of chatter when the Cavs gave him a contract extension to coach the team through the 2023-24 season. Much of the praise then was that Bickerstaff was a young, upcoming coach who would connect better with his young players and he was the right man for the head coaching job.

Prior to coming over to Cleveland, Bickerstaff had been the head coach of the Memphis Grizzlies. His coaching record was 49-97. Not exactly close to playoff bound.

Now in Cleveland after last season’s 22-50 record, even after getting that nice contract extension, his record as a head coach is 112-187. Not exactly what the doctor ordered.

Last season, the Cavaliers were again getting young pieces such as Darius Garland and Isaac Okoro plenty of experience, and Garland shined, for one, as did Collin Sexton. Sexton, as an aside, has been a key player mentioned in trade rumors of late though, so we’ll see in regards to his outlook.

And the club was ravaged by injuries, so it was far from ideal circumstances, but even so, the Cavs were had their share of issues game-to-game still, even with individual bright spots.