It’s always an interesting discussion with Cleveland Cavaliers fans when they start talking about the player rotation decisions from head coach J.B. Bickerstaff. The Cavs are having a successful season so far standing at 42-27 and in 4th place in the Eastern Conference so some credit has to be given to the players and coach for reaching this point. However, recent moves made by the Cavs head coach by not playing a couple of key bench players including Cedi Osman and Dean Wade will ultimately hurt the team as they move into the playoffs for the first time in five seasons.
It’s been so frustrating to see Bickerstaff continually keep Wade and Osman, two key Cavs reserves, glued to the bench.
There’s been a lot of negative attention paid to the Cavs bench and trying to paint this picture that the bench is horrible. Granted the Wine and Gold’s bench scoring production is ranked 29th this season, but, some of that has to do with Bickerstaff only giving his bench players 79.8 minutes per game, which is 26th in the league.
Teams like the Phoenix Suns, Brooklyn Nets, and Milwaukee Bucks all use their bench much more. The Bucks average 92.3 minutes per game while the Suns average 87 minutes.
All this is to point out that, while the numbers show a poor bench, and that may be true to a certain degree, it also has to do with a head coach that is not playing his players off that bench enough to where they can make a dent. You have to build a bench over time and Bickerstaff hasn’t been willing to build that group. Instead, he keeps trying to plug players in with no consistency.
In the last week or two, he has settled on two players, Lamar Stevens and Caris LeVert, to play the most bench minutes. He’s sprinkled in Ricky Rubio too, but he’s left the rest of the group riding the pine. Two of those players are Osman and Wade and as I just mentioned, and keeping them idle is a bad move by Bickerstaff.