Report: Players felt like J.B. Bickerstaff didn’t treat Cavs as team that had ‘arrived’ during head-coaching tenure

Under new head coach Kenny Atkinson, the Cleveland Cavaliers are enjoying a dominant 2024-25 season and have earned a place in the championship discussion.

The way Cleveland.com’s Chris Fedor sees it, Atkinson is treating his squad like a “veteran team that can legitimately win a championship.”

Fedor explained that previous Cavs head coach J.B. Bickerstaff didn’t exactly take the same approach, something that was a “knock” on the skipper.

“One of the knocks against J.B. from the players is that they were not treated by him as a team that had arrived or a team that was a playoff contender,” Fedor said. “He was kinda still treating them as if they were going through a rebuilding phase. Kenny is treating the Cavs like a veteran team that can legitimately win a championship.”

In Bickerstaff’s defense, when he initially took over the Cavs job, he did inherit a rebuild. The 2020-21 campaign was Bickerstaff’s first full season as Cleveland’s skipper, and he was tasked with revitalizing a franchise that had just suffered through a 19-46 season.

In Bickerstaff’s first full season leading the way, the Cavs went just 22-50. But in the years that followed, he was able to help the franchise make forward progress each season.

In the 2021-22 season, he led the Cavs to a play-in berth. In the 2022-23 season, he led them to their first playoff series in years. Then in the 2023-24 season, he helped them finally win a playoff series before they eventually bowed out in the second round.

Unfortunately for Bickerstaff, his tenure with Cleveland came to an end after the team was eliminated from the 2024 NBA Playoffs. He is now the head coach of the Detroit Pistons, where he is already doing a nice job of turning them into a competitive squad following years of agony.

While a rebuilding mindset might have been necessary from Bickerstaff at the beginning of his head-coaching tenure with the Cavs, it’s possible that he held onto that approach for too long once the team had already proven that it was ready to compete.

Either way, he did a lot for the franchise, and it’s anyone’s guess where the Cavs would be today if not for his tenure with the team. Sometimes, it takes more than one head coach for an organization to go from the basement to the mountaintop.

Atkinson, for his part, has Cleveland at 43-10 through 53 games, a remarkable place to be as the All-Star Game approaches.