After the Cleveland Cavaliers lost to the Boston Celtics in five games in the second round of the 2024 NBA Playoffs, they decided to part ways with head coach J.B. Bickerstaff. Bickerstaff spent more than four seasons leading the Cavaliers from the sidelines before he was let go.
Cleveland replaced Bickerstaff with Kenny Atkinson, and while Atkinson just coached the team to one of the best regular seasons in franchise history, the squad is now in danger of advancing no further in the playoffs than it did in Bickerstaff’s swan song in Cleveland.
Bickerstaff’s nephew appeared to throw shade at the Cavaliers with a post on X while they were getting dominated by the Indiana Pacers in Sunday’s Game 4. Cleveland lost the game in decisive fashion and is now in a 1-3 hole.
Lol no comment
— Jordan Bickerstaff (@Jbickerstaff32) May 12, 2025
While the Cavaliers could very well flame out early on in the playoffs once again with a new head coach, Bickerstaff is fresh off an incredibly impressive inaugural season leading the Detroit Pistons. He helped Detroit put together one of the greatest turnarounds from one season to the next in the history of the league.
Detroit had a historically woeful 2023-24 regular season before Bickerstaff came over, as it won just 14 games and suffered the longest single-season losing streak in NBA history at 28 games. But not long after all that losing, Bickerstaff led Detroit to 44 wins in the 2024-25 regular season and the No. 6 seed in the Eastern Conference.
The Pistons also gave the No. 3 seed New York Knicks just about all they could handle in the opening round of the 2025 NBA Playoffs, as they took the Knicks to six games and were close to forcing a Game 7.
During the regular season, when the Cavaliers were running roughshod over teams, it seemed as if they clearly made the right decision by getting rid of Bickerstaff and installing Atkinson as his successor.
But with the Cavaliers on the brink of another second-round exit and Bickerstaff not far removed from a very solid first season with the Pistons, it may be debatable whether they should have cut ties with someone who spent quite a bit of time as their head coach in Bickerstaff.
