Is J.B Bickerstaff’s coaching holding this Cavs team back?

Concern No. 1: Cavs clutch time inconsistencies so far

When you start dissecting the Cavs games this season especially those games where they were within or leading by five points with only five minutes to play, what NBA stats deems as “clutch time,” the Wine and Gold are only 20-20 on the year. Why is that? You would think that the Cavaliers would have an overall better record in the clutch.

Part of that has to do with the players being stagnant and not running much offense. Whose fault is that? The players have to take some accountability, but so does the head coach. The focus in those clutch situations should be to run plays and execute and those things seem to go out the window for Cleveland in these nail-biting moments.

For the season the Cavs are 16th in the league in assist rate, but in that five-minute window at the end of games when things are on the line, the team falls to 25th in the league in assist rate. They stop passing the ball and try too hard to score baskets on their own.

There have been numerous breakdowns on defense too in these late moments and the Cavs will give back a lead that they had built earlier in the last quarter. Some of these moments still have to do with the youth of the team and they might lose their focus for a number of reasons.

Bickerstaff is the coach and while some of these things are out of his control at times it’s the bigger picture on the whole topic. The little mistakes still continue to happen and he’s ultimately in charge of making sure those little things get cleaned up and that takes coaching.