I don’t envy NBA head coaches/coaches and the daily grind to win on a consistent basis, of which if they don’t, they’ll end up losing their job. They are getting compensated nicely for doing a sub-par job so I don’t worry about them that much, but when we start looking more closely at our Cleveland Cavaliers and their head coach J.B. Bickerstaff, I am starting to question just exactly what he’s established as the team’s leader?
Should Bickerstaff continue being the team’s head coach, especially if they have a poor season again like the previous one?
Now, I’m not the first to try and understand the pressures that NBA head coaches must endure, and coach-player relationships can be stressful, particularly if you’re a rebuilding team and situations can be fluid. We don’t get too much into that though.
Albeit obviously, I’ve never been an NBA head coach, but like some of you, I’ve gone down that path of coaching youngsters before at other levels like at high school. When you’re a coach, at any level, you have to learn to manage your own emotions and the emotions of your players and sometimes even the emotions of the people that are tied to the players, like their parents. It’s a difficult job, period!
I’ll be the first to say what Bickerstaff is doing as the Cavaliers head coach to this point, surrounding himself with a good assistant coaching staff, that seems to align with the youth of the current Cavalier roster, is admirable.
However, when do the training wheels come off and the Cavs have to face growing up in the face and risk falling many times? So far, it seems like those wheels are still there and for the Cavaliers to go further than their next-door neighbor’s driveway, then head coach Bickerstaff needs to break them of that security blanket.
Do you remember in the movie, Forrest Gump, when the character Forrest Gump, played by the actor Tom Hanks, breaks away from his supportive leg braces at the beginning of the film? What a wonderful moment for the character in the movie to be able to accomplish his task of speeding away from his enemies to save himself.
This is how I see the Cavaliers as a franchise. The leg braces represent the years of losing and the other things, like the shadow of LeBron James’ legacy that are holding this franchise back.
Does Bickerstaff have what it takes to help this Cavs team break those braces? I just don’t know…
We’ll dive further into the Bickerstaff outlook from here, though.
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.
Is Bickerstaff the right person to lead the Cavs?
So yes, I’m worried as a Cavs fan and exactly where this team is headed under Bickerstaff’s lead. The discussion two years ago was that Bickerstaff would be good at communicating and bringing a more cohesive approach to his young team.
When you listen to Bickerstaff discuss his team, his players and how they all are all trying to get better you certainly believe that those concepts and ideas are being addressed. But the team has continued to struggle and simply is not winning.
I’ve written before about the youth on this team and that being a good thing but also a troubling thing because there is so much that has to be done on the mental and emotional side of things. I believe Bickerstaff is probably a good head coach but sometimes good head coaches, regardless of their efforts, just aren’t the right fit.
That’s where I think we are with Bickerstaff and the Cavs. There is still time this next season to showcase what some thought Bickerstaff’s strengths were as a head coach when the Cavs handed him the nice contract. I think the Cavaliers organization is desperate and so badly wants that continuity for its players in having Bickerstaff coach the team. I think that’s a good plan, but I also think that plan wasn’t completely looked at well enough last year.
Bickerstaff came to Cleveland after subpar years of coaching at Memphis, where he was an associate head coach prior to that, and even before that in a brief stint with the Houston Rockets, where he was a longtime assistant coach previously.
There are reasons to be hopeful going into this next season, especially getting another high draft pick in the upcoming NBA Draft on July 29.
But this next year for Bickerstaff is big for him and trying to improve on what the team did last season under his direction. The Cavs front office should be willing to part ways with Bickerstaff especially if the winning part of the process doesn’t start showing up.
The training wheels on the bike and the leg braces need to come off. The NBA is about winning and its time to start seeing that with the Cavs.