{"id":519473,"date":"2026-01-06T04:01:24","date_gmt":"2026-01-06T04:01:24","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/nba\/519473\/"},"modified":"2026-01-06T04:01:24","modified_gmt":"2026-01-06T04:01:24","slug":"1-brutal-stat-that-has-kenny-atkinson-scrambling-to-make-fixes","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/nba\/519473\/","title":{"rendered":"1 brutal stat that has Kenny Atkinson scrambling to make fixes"},"content":{"rendered":"

At present, the Cleveland Cavaliers are sitting in eighth place<\/a> in the Eastern Conference standings with a 20-17 record; they are one loss away from tying their total for the entirety of the 2024-25 campaign, and they have arguably been the most disappointing team in the NBA this season. And their lack of bench production may be the most to blame for their steep decline from last season.<\/p>\n

As Chris Fedor of Cleveland.com pointed out<\/a>, the Cavs have the league\u2019s worst net rating in the second quarter, with opponents outscoring them by 14.4 points per 100 possessions during that pitiful 12-minute stretch.<\/p>\n

This is the quarter where the Cavs bring most of their reserves in, which suggests a huge correlation between bench minutes and a precipitous downfall in their quality of play; Atkinson even admitted that \u201cthe bench play hurt\u201d them during their 114-110 loss to the Detroit Pistons on Sunday.<\/a><\/p>\n

This is leaving Cavs head coach Kenny Atkinson in a tough predicament in terms of shuffling his rotation, although he is thinking of a clear way to mitigate the damage the bench is causing the team.<\/p>\n

\u201cMaybe we keep two of our stars out there at the same time. We\u2019ve gotta help them,\u201d Atkinson said.<\/p>\n

Positive regression could be coming for the Cavs<\/p>\n

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\"Cleveland<\/p>\n

Ken Blaze-Imagn Images<\/p>\n

The Cavs\u2019 decision to trade Isaac Okoro for Lonzo Ball to replace Ty Jerome as the floor general to lead the bench unit did not work. It\u2019s been difficult as well for the Cavs amid Max Strus\u2019 injury, as this has forced the likes of Sam Merrill, De\u2019Andre Hunter, and Dean Wade into larger roles that have made it difficult for the bench to keep leads for Cleveland.<\/p>\n

Nevertheless, the Cavs didn\u2019t magically become a bad team overnight<\/a>. The key pieces of their 64-win squad are still there, which suggests that some positive regression could be coming \u2014 so long as Atkinson figures out which lineup combinations work best.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"At present, the Cleveland Cavaliers are sitting in eighth place in the Eastern Conference standings with a 20-17…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":519474,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[3772],"tags":[7,306,305,193,3846,3627,6],"class_list":{"0":"post-519473","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-kenny-atkinson","14":"tag-nba"},"share_on_mastodon":{"url":"https:\/\/channels.im\/@nba\/115846164329936848","error":""},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/nba\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/519473","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=519473"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/nba\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/519473\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/nba\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/519474"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/nba\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=519473"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/nba\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=519473"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/nba\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=519473"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}