{"id":597905,"date":"2026-02-12T01:50:15","date_gmt":"2026-02-12T01:50:15","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/nba\/597905\/"},"modified":"2026-02-12T01:50:15","modified_gmt":"2026-02-12T01:50:15","slug":"kenny-atkinson-is-stealing-plays-from-james-hardens-previous-teams","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/nba\/597905\/","title":{"rendered":"Kenny Atkinson is stealing plays from James Harden\u2019s previous teams"},"content":{"rendered":"

CLEVELAND \u2014 Trading for James Harden two-thirds of the way through the season presents some challenges for Cleveland Cavaliers<\/a> head coach Kenny Atkinson.<\/p>\n

Harden has had success playing an isolation-heavy style where he knows where everyone is on the court. Atkinson has been known for a heavy ball and player movement offense. Those opposites can\u2019t co-exist, at least not in how they\u2019ve looked in previous itterations.<\/p>\n

After Harden\u2019s debut, Atkinson said that \u201cplayers win, not systems<\/a>.\u201d By the looks of it, Harden\u2019s style will win out for at least this season and rightfully so. The Cavs are already taking steps to make sure that they put him in the best position to succeed.<\/p>\n

\u201cI\u2019ve looked at all the Houston stuff, and looked at Clippers stuff, looked at Sixers stuff,\u201d Atkinson said, \u201cI think that\u2019s part of your job as a coach is to see what\u2019s worked. Heck, we ran two ATOs (after timeout plays) the other night I stole from [Mike] D\u2019Antoni. Houston stuff. Nothing particularly new or innovative. But it\u2019s, how do we get an advantage for him type stuff?\u201d<\/p>\n

It\u2019s important to remember that D\u2019Antoni was the architect of the seven seconds or less Phoenix Suns<\/a>. They were a high octane, revolutionary offense that was built on playing fast and having ample ball and player movement. It\u2019s not too dissimilar to the systems that Atkinson has run as a head coach.<\/p>\n

But D\u2019Antoni didn\u2019t try to force Harden into that system in Houston. Instead, he created an environment for Harden to thrive in, because he knew that particular systems don\u2019t matter if it\u2019s not what fits your players.<\/p>\n

So far, Atkinson is doing his part to make sure the Cavs fit around Harden and not the necessarily the other way around. When you have a player as good as Harden who can make his teammates better \u2014 especially the bigs<\/a> \u2014 it would be foolish to not take advantage of that.<\/p>\n

\u201cWe\u2019d be dumb not to,\u201d Atkinson said about borrowing stuff from Harden\u2019s previous stops. \u201cI\u2019m looking forward to over the All-Star break to dive in deeper on how we can use him even better.\u201d<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"CLEVELAND \u2014 Trading for James Harden two-thirds of the way through the season presents some challenges for Cleveland…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":597906,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":"","_share_on_mastodon":"0"},"categories":[3772],"tags":[7,306,147,305,193,3846,6],"class_list":{"0":"post-597905","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-cavs-news","11":"tag-cleveland","12":"tag-cleveland-cavaliers","13":"tag-clevelandcavaliers","14":"tag-nba"},"share_on_mastodon":{"url":"https:\/\/channels.im\/@nba\/116055154546414183","error":""},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/nba\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/597905","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=597905"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/nba\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/597905\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/nba\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/597906"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/nba\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=597905"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/nba\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=597905"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/nba\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=597905"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}