Sam Merrill ‘excited’ about Cavs roster and working with new coaching staff

The 2024-25 NBA regular season is still a ways away from commencing, though Cleveland Cavaliers guard Sam Merrill seemingly already thinks very highly of the team’s new coaching staff, which is led by head coach Kenny Atkinson.

“Yeah, really excited about the group we have and the new staff,” Merrill said when asked to give his first impressions of the coaching staff. “We haven’t been able to spend a ton of time together ’cause Kenny’s obviously was helpin’ out with the French national team, but had a couple workouts down in Vegas at Summer League, and then have had a couple workouts in Cleveland here in the last couple weeks. And we haven’t really gotten into system — plays or anything like that. But it’s clear there’s a way that we’re tryin’ to play, and we’ve been trying to simulate decision-making, quick decisions, playing out of advantages and just trying to play the right way offensively.”

The Cavaliers hired Atkinson to replace J.B. Bickerstaff. Bickerstaff spent four-plus seasons coaching Cleveland and led the team to a pair of playoff appearances.

The team’s newest head coach has plenty of head coaching experience at the NBA level as well. Atkinson was the head coach of the Brooklyn Nets from the 2016-17 season through the 2019-20 campaign and coached the franchise to a berth in the 2019 NBA Playoffs.

But Atksinon has spent the past four seasons serving as an assistant coach. He spent the 2020-21 campaign as an assistant with the Los Angeles Clippers before putting together a three-year stint as an assistant with Steve Kerr and the Golden State Warriors. Atkinson was in the middle of his tenure with the Warriors when the team won the 2022 NBA title.

Atkinson is far from the only new face on the Cavaliers’ coaching staff. For one, Johnnie Bryant is now the team’s associate head coach after he carved out a stint as the associate head coach of the New York Knicks.

One former NBA player has also joined Cleveland’s staff. Former Atlanta Hawks forward DeMarre Carroll will be one of Atkinson’s assistant coaches, and he was an assistant under Darvin Ham’s Los Angeles Lakers last season.

After some uneventful stretches playing for the Milwaukee Bucks and Memphis Grizzlies, Merrill solidified himself as a legitimate NBA player with the Cavaliers during the 2023-24 regular season. He was a consistent member of Bickerstaff’s rotation, considering he played in 61 games.

Merrill helped to space the floor for the Cavaliers’ offense when he was on the floor. He shot an impressive 40.4 percent from 3-point range on 5.8 attempts per game in his fourth NBA season and second in Cleveland.

The 28-year-old also saw 37.0 percent of his 3-point attempts go through the net across 10 games played in the 2024 NBA Playoffs.