Cavs Media Day: Is J.B. Bickerstaff stuck in the past?

Every season the Cleveland Cavaliers kick things off with Media Day, where players and team personnel come together to take photos, answer questions and attempt to set proper expectations for the season to come.

It’s a great first look into how the Cavs see themselves, and their explanation of an offseason of moves. After the team spent the No. 3 overall pick on a big (Evan Mobley), re-signed a center for $100 million (Jarrett Allen) and sent Larry Nance Jr. and a second-round pick out to sign Lauri Markkanen to a $67 million deal, it was only natural to ask the team why they focused on their bigs so much.

During the Cavs Media Day, head coach J.B. Bickerstaff demonstrated he doesn’t understand modern basketball

Head coach J.B. Bickerstaff gave an explanation for why the Cavs emphasized big men to the degree that they did, helping to unpack the team’s motivations this offseason. Here he is:

Alright, so the team identified weaknesses on the roster and went out to address them. To speed the team up, they poured nearly all of their resources into 7-footers. Wait, that doesn’t make sense. Generally, the way to play faster is to play smaller. Did Bickerstaff elaborate further?

Huh. The Cavs’ goal for the offseason was that they wanted to play faster, and therefore they went out and invested in bigs, to “beat small ball” by…playing slower. Well, at least we know Bickerstaff is committed to the team’s other goal of increasing the 3-point emphasis of a team that ranked 30th in 3-point percentage last year.

For those keeping track at home, Bickerstaff managed to walk back both of the team’s supposed goals for the season. He said the team wants to get more modern in its approach, and then can’t even stick to that line of reasoning long enough to convince us they really mean to do that.

Despite his age, Bickerstaff is an old-school coach. His dad was a longtime coach, and so he grew up around the game, around the towering 7-footers of the 1980s and ’90s. Even in the 2000s most of the league’s best players were bigs.

That’s simply not the case anymore. Teams win titles not because of big men but because of big wings and 3-point shooters. That’s not meant to be a blanket statement, but simply an evaluation of the last decade-plus of basketball.

If anyone should know that, it’s Cleveland! They downshifted to play Kevin Love at the 5 and won a title shooting 3-pointers at historic rates, driven by a dynamic ball-handler in Kyrie Irving and a “big wing” in LeBron James. The Warriors won three titles by going small. The Toronto Raptors won because they moved their starting power forward to backup center in order to play as many perimeter players as possible.

Even Bickerstaff’s proof text, the Los Angeles Lakers in the bubble, don’t truly prove his point. They certainly played “big” for much of the year, but when the games truly mattered they moved Anthony Davis to the 5 and LeBron James to the 4. They didn’t win the title because they had bigs; they won because of LeBron James and versatility up-and-down the lineup.

That versatility is the name of the game. A team needs size at time, but it also needs to know when to eject that size in favor of speed, or perimeter skill. The Milwaukee Bucks are massive, but that’s because they play a near-7-footer at the 4 with perimeter skills. Their size helped, but it was their skill and versatility that mattered more.

It’s possible Bickerstaff is saved from himself if Evan Mobley develops into a player in the vein of Giannis Antetokounmpo, a player with tremendous size who can handle and make plays from outside while defending the paint on the other end. That’s where size matters, on defense, but a team that can’t morph to match its opponent will be dead in the water.

Bickerstaff had a note of optimism to inject into his speech:

I’m glad that Bickerstaff believes in the roster they have assembled, but consider me skeptical about this exciting style of basketball. This roster has that potential, with Darius Garland and Ricky Rubio pushing transition opportunities, and Dylan Windler, Lauri Markkanen, Collin Sexton and Kevin Love all jacking 3-pointers, but I don’t think Bickerstaff wants that. He wants to “not take too many” 3-pointers, in a league where the more you shoot, the more you score. That’s reductionistic, but Bickerstaff appears to be revisionistic.

Jarrett Allen is a talented player, and the Cavs’ defense will be better off having him in tow. Lauri Markkanen is an excellent shooter, and the Cavs’ offense will be better off with him aboard. Evan Mobley is hopefully a help to both offense and defense as he develops.

Yet in the end, the Cavaliers invested 90 percent of their offseason resources into big men, in an age where the big has never been less valuable and more replaceable. Their reason for doing so is disjointed and contradictory, some cover story about modern basketball papered over the reality that Bickerstaff wants to win like teams did “back in the day.”

If he wants to look at history, he should look at his own team’s history. LeBron James changed the league, and the Cleveland Cavaliers have a title because they acted accordingly. If Bickerstaff thinks otherwise, he’s either a visionary or he is wrong, stuck in the past. I’ll let you be the judge.