{"id":840960,"date":"2026-09-22T07:27:36","date_gmt":"2026-09-22T07:27:36","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/nba\/840960\/"},"modified":"2026-09-22T07:27:36","modified_gmt":"2026-09-22T07:27:36","slug":"cavs-season-preview-kenny-atkinson-getting-more-than-just-buy-in","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/nba\/840960\/","title":{"rendered":"Cavs season preview: Kenny Atkinson – Getting more than just buy-in"},"content":{"rendered":"

Last regular season was a step backwards for the Cleveland Cavaliers<\/a>. They struggled through injuries and lacked much of the cohesion that made them a 64-win juggernauts the year before.<\/p>\n

It\u2019d be easy to blame Kenny Atkinson for last regular season being a disappointment. Many of the things that worked the previous year simply didn\u2019t this time. The Cavs never established an identity, the offense struggled to find flow, and key players like Evan Mobley and De\u2019Andre Hunter couldn\u2019t find their place within the offense early on. All of those things reflect poorly on the coaching staff.<\/p>\n

Despite that, I would argue that Atkinson did a better job last season than he did when he won Coach of the Year.<\/p>\n

Atkinson made the best of a bad situation. The Cavs had plenty of chances to throw in the towel but didn\u2019t, thanks in part to Atkinson. They kept their heads above water until a trade came through to save their season.<\/p>\n

Acquiring James Harden at the deadline for Darius Garland changed everything. Bringing in a talented and healthy point guard in Harden raised the Cavs\u2019 floor and ceiling, making a deep postseason run possible. It also meant that they had to completely overhaul how they played just two months before the start of the playoffs.<\/p>\n

Atkinson\u2019s willingness to cede control of the offense to Harden\u2019s heliocentric style allowed them to hit the ground running. Atkinson\u2019s preferred motion-based offense that worked the year before was thrown out in favor of more traditional high pick-and-rolls.<\/p>\n

This change allowed the Cavs to go from having the ninth-best<\/a> offense in the league before the Harden trade (117.4 offensive rating<\/a>) to registering the fourth-best<\/a> (121.5 offensive rating<\/a>) afterward.<\/p>\n

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Anything bought from the links helps support Fear the Sword. You can buy the Spida shirt HERE<\/a>. You can also shop all of Homage\u2019s Cavs gear HERE<\/a>.<\/p>\n

Schematics and in-game adjustments aren\u2019t the most important skills for NBA coaches; establishing trust with your players and getting them to buy into your vision is. Atkinson did that by putting his personal preferences aside to do what was best for the players actually on his team.<\/p>\n

\u201cHe\u2019s the ultimate player\u2019s coach, he gets it, he understands his team,\u201d Harden said at the close of last postseason<\/a>. \u201cI think he did an unbelievable job of getting me acclimated as fast as possible.\u201d<\/p>\n

Donovan Mitchell echoed that sentiment<\/a>. \u201cI love Kenny. We love Kenny. We ride with Kenny, and ultimately that\u2019s all that matters.\u201d<\/p>\n

This all added to the Cavs\u2019 most successful postseason run with this group as they advanced to the conference finals for the first time since 2018. Yet, their inability to go further could be due to the fact that there wasn\u2019t an identity to this team besides just Harden-centric basketball.<\/p>\n

When things got difficult late in postseason games, the Cavs repeatedly just went to high pick-and-rolls without any alternatives. That worked late in Game 3<\/a> against the Detroit Pistons<\/a>. It didn\u2019t in the Game 1 collapse to the New York Knicks<\/a>.<\/p>\n

You could justify the team sticking to the basics given how chaotic last season was. You can\u2019t anymore.<\/p>\n

Atkinson has had a full summer with this backcourt. That\u2019s more than enough time to figure out how he wants this offense to function \u2014 and more importantly \u2014 get both guards on board with executing that vision.<\/p>\n

On top of that, Atkinson needs to figure out how to get Jarrett Allen and Mobley more involved on a consistent basis. We saw repeatedly in the playoffs that the Cavs were at their best when they were focal pieces of the attack and not just bystanders. Yet, getting them and the guards to realize this and make this a priority every game has been an overall losing battle. Changing that and getting the bigs into the flow of the game more consistently would do wonders for the Cavs on both ends of the floor.<\/p>\n

The Cavs have been successful with Atkinson over the last two seasons; however, that might not be enough to shield him from being the fall guy if things go sideways this year. This team is all in on a two- to three-year window after trading away another first-round pick this summer and giving a 37-year-old $97 million guaranteed. If things go wrong, it\u2019ll be much easier to change the coach than it would be to drastically overhaul the roster again.<\/p>\n

This could be a make-or-break year for the Cavs. It almost certainly will be for Atkinson. He\u2019s answered the call the last two seasons, putting this team in the best position to win. We\u2019ll see if he can do so again in what will inevitably be a very different test than either of the previous two campaigns.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Last regular season was a step backwards for the Cleveland Cavaliers. They struggled through injuries and lacked much…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":840961,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[3772],"tags":[7,306,1236,305,193,3846,6],"class_list":["post-840960","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-cleveland-cavaliers","tag-basketball","tag-cavaliers","tag-cavs-analysis","tag-cleveland","tag-cleveland-cavaliers","tag-clevelandcavaliers","tag-nba"],"share_on_mastodon":{"url":"https:\/\/channels.im\/@nba\/117313512674395538","error":""},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/nba\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/840960","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=840960"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/nba\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/840960\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/nba\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/840961"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/nba\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=840960"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/nba\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=840960"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/nba\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=840960"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}