{"id":517448,"date":"2026-01-05T04:30:12","date_gmt":"2026-01-05T04:30:12","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/nba\/517448\/"},"modified":"2026-01-05T04:30:12","modified_gmt":"2026-01-05T04:30:12","slug":"kenny-atkinson-shockingly-calls-out-the-cleveland-cavaliers-bench-for-poor-performance-2","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/nba\/517448\/","title":{"rendered":"Kenny Atkinson shockingly calls out the Cleveland Cavaliers’ bench for poor performance"},"content":{"rendered":"

Kenny Atkinson shockingly calls out the Cleveland Cavaliers’ bench for poor performance<\/a> originally appeared on The Sporting News<\/a>. Add The Sporting News as a Preferred Source by clicking here<\/a>.<\/p>\n

The Cleveland Cavaliers<\/a> were supposed to be the best team in the Eastern Conference before the season started. Everyone thought they would replicate their superb 2024-25 regular season when they won 64 games to secure the first seed.<\/p>\n

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After a solid three-game winning streak, the Cavaliers<\/a> are back on the losing end after being beaten by the Detroit Pistons<\/a>, 114-110. Considering the Pistons<\/a> are currently the best team in the Eastern Conference, this was a demoralizing blow for head coach Kenny Atkinson and his team.<\/p>\n

Atkinson has blamed the bench for the Cavs’ dip<\/p>\n

The Cavaliers were on the up and up after the three-game winning streak. Darius Garland and Donovan Mitchell were meshing well in the backcourt again. They were also helping Evan Mobley and Jarrett Allen get some rhythm by feeding them with constant passes.<\/p>\n

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Coach Atkinson loved what he saw from his starters, including Jaylon Tyson. They performed well in the past few games, but it appears that Atkinson is unhappy with how the bench performed, especially against the Pistons.<\/p>\n

More:\u00a0Darius Garland on why making plays for the big men is the key to victory for the Cavs<\/a><\/p>\n

Atkinson has never been shy to switch up his rotations, which was evident when he froze out Lonzo Ball a few games ago. Considering that Ball is not playing well, Atkinson is valid with his decision to do that. In the game against the Pistons,<\/p>\n

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“We gotta look at it. Obviously, wasn’t the right combination. The bench play hurt us tonight,” Atkinson honestly said about his backups after the game against Detroit<\/a>.<\/p>\n

The Cavaliers only had 28 points from the bench, and half of them came from De’Andre Hunter. Unfortunately, Allen was out for this game, which meant Sam Merrill entered the starting lineup, removing production from the bench.<\/p>\n

The Pistons had 51 bench points, which almost doubled the Cavaliers’ backups.\u00a0Daniss Jenkins himself set the franchise scoring record for a Pistons reserve in one quarter, as he scored 21 points on a perfect 7-for-7 from the field in the second quarter.<\/p>\n

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That likely amplified Atkinson’s thoughts about his bench because Jenkins alone scored 25 points in this game. That is only three points behind the entire Cavaliers bench, so Atkinson is calling his team out to perform better, so they can get a better run in the second half of the season.<\/p>\n

More NBA News:\u00a0<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Kenny Atkinson shockingly calls out the Cleveland Cavaliers’ bench for poor performance originally appeared on The Sporting News.…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":517449,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[3772],"tags":[7,306,305,193,3846,6101,791,188,864,1409,576,1178,2286,3627,4442,6,1166],"class_list":{"0":"post-517448","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-cleveland-cavaliers","8":"tag-basketball","9":"tag-cavaliers","10":"tag-cleveland","11":"tag-cleveland-cavaliers","12":"tag-clevelandcavaliers","13":"tag-daniss-jenkins","14":"tag-darius-garland","15":"tag-detroit-pistons","16":"tag-donovan-mitchell","17":"tag-eastern-conference","18":"tag-evan-mobley","19":"tag-jarrett-allen","20":"tag-jaylon-tyson","21":"tag-kenny-atkinson","22":"tag-lonzo-ball","23":"tag-nba","24":"tag-sam-merrill"},"share_on_mastodon":{"url":"https:\/\/channels.im\/@nba\/115840616074010438","error":""},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/nba\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/517448","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/nba\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/nba\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/nba\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/nba\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=517448"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/nba\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/517448\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/nba\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/517449"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/nba\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=517448"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/nba\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=517448"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/nba\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=517448"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}