Copyright cleveland.com
CLEVELAND, Ohio — You’re Kenny Atkinson, the Cavs’ coach. Your season opens Wednesday night in New York against the Knicks. So far, you’ve been pretty relaxed. You have a very good team. “I know I’ll really feel it when the bus rolls up to the Garden,” you say. That’s Madison Square Garden. You grew up on Long Island, a Knicks fan dating back to the days of Walt Frazier and Red Holtzman. Madison Square Garden truly was the Mecca of Basketball to you. Stories by Terry Pluto For the Browns, is it just one game ... or something more? – Terry Pluto Finally! Browns give fans an old-school reason to cheer – Terry Pluto Browns give the ball to Quinshon Judkins and get out of way – Terry Pluto’s Halftime Scribbles You’re 58 years old. You’ve been in the NBA for 17 years as a coach. This is your sixth season as a head coach. You spent four years with the Brooklyn Nets (2016-20). “Opening day is still special,” you say. “It’s when I think about how I’m really in the NBA.” It’s wise to savor those thoughts, even if it’s only for a brief moment. You know how hard it is to get to the NBA. You were a star point guard at Richmond, but not drafted by the NBA. You spent nearly two decades bouncing around the minor leagues in the U.S. and also played and coached overseas in France, Germany, Italy, Spain and the Netherlands. You were nobody’s phenom as a player. Nor did you have a big name coach ready to open the door for you into the NBA. Now it starts But here you are, coaching one of the best teams in the league. Here you are, the 2024-25 NBA Coach of the Year. Here you are, “feeling it.” It’s nerves. The stomach. The sense of being unsettled. Opening day? “If we play great, I wouldn’t be surprised,” you say. You pause. “If we don’t play great, I wouldn’t be surprised,” you also say. Then you shake your head. “You don’t know how it will turn out – especially the first game,” you say. You think back to last year at this time. You were in your first season as the Cavs’ head coach. You changed the offense and some other things. You also played four preseason games … “And we lost them all,” you say, another shake of the head. Then your team opened the regular season with a 15-game winning streak. “That’s what I mean,” you say. “You really don’t know.” Something to prove Thinking about your team, you smile. You have players who not only are talented, but want to be coached. “They are great guys … fine, fine gentlemen,” you say. Those are words not often heard in pro sports … fine gentlemen. But that is the Cavs, these Cavs who had a 64-18 record last season. But your team was knocked out of the playoffs in the second round. “Eleven-and-15,” you say. That’s the Cavs’ playoff record in the last three playoff seasons. “We still have a lot to prove,” you tell people. “It’s not like we haven’t done anything. We’ve done a lot … ” But 11-15 in the playoffs … it still hurts. It’s losing twice in the second round in the last two years. This is only your second year as the Cavs’ coach. Not all of that happened on your watch. But sweeping Miami in the first round, and then being wiped by Indiana in five games in the second round – part of that still gnaws away at you. You want to win because you’re a coach, but it’s more than that. You really like this team, these players. You want to win for team president Koby Altman and the organization that hired you. You have been in Cleveland only for a year, but you’ve embraced the city. You want to win for the fans. Opportunity & Responsibility You don’t say it, but you feel it – the responsibility. Coaching the Cavs also is a tremendous opportunity. It bothers you when Donovan Mitchell is criticized for not winning a title. “That’s so unfair,” you say. “I hate that. Think of all the great players who didn’t win a title. I don’t put it on Donovan. I put it on us. I put it on me, on the players, on all of us. He’s done his part.” Last training camp was about building an offense that became one of the most productive and efficient in the NBA. Now, it’s defense. “We need to be more proactive and aggressive,” you say. “We need to score off our defense a little more. It’s not just ball pressure, as most people think an aggressive defense is.” You have your players looking to get into passing lanes for steals. You’ve been pushing the big men to be more aggressive when defending the pick-and-roll. You think about football and a defense “getting takeaways.” It’s a team effort to do that in basketball. That’s the gospel you preached in this training camp. But you wonder, “Will it work?” When the real games begin? “It’s time to start discovering who your team is,” you say. “It’s not about the hype. It’s about really getting to know who your team is under game conditions, I’m anxious to get that information.” You’re Kenny Atkinson and opening day is Wednesday. .
