Cleveland Cavaliers Coaching Search: How Much Does Previous Experience Matter? | Cavs Podcast
on today’s show hi I’m new here let’s get to know each other and the first four candidates for the Cavs head coaching vacancy you are locked on Cavs your daily Cleveland Cavaliers podcast part of the locked on podcast Network your team every day thanks for making lock on Cavs your first listen every day the best way you can help grow the show listen every day leave a festar review like the video on YouTube we are free and available wherever you get your podcast and on YouTube as well part of the locked on podcast Network your team every day today’s episode brought to you by LinkedIn jobs hiring is easy when you have that many quality candidates so easy in fact that 86% of small businesses get a qualified candidate within 24 hours post your job for free at linkedin.com lockon NBA that’s linkedin.com SL lockon NBA to post your job for free terms and conditions apply hi I I’m new here my name is Danny Cunningham I’m super super excited to be with lockon now you may have heard me in the past I currently do stuff at 923 the fan I currently do stuff at Cleveland magazine previously I have covered the Cleveland Cavaliers on an everyday basis for ESPN Cleveland I’ve been around this team I’ve been around the NBA for a really long time and I’m super excited about this opportunity I’m super excited to get to talk about the Cleveland Cavaliers with you each and every single day I I mention being the first listen every day and I’m really taking that seriously I’m really stoked about that this is something that’s important to me I want to be in your inbox every single day when you wake up I want lock on Cavs to be your first listen I’ve been around this team for a while I’m very excited about what the future of this team could be I’m very excited to go through this Cavs coaching search with everybody here and talk about it each and every day um but this is something that I couldn’t wait to get started when I was approached by lockon about coming aboard about taking over the Cav show I was really really stoked for the opportunity and I just this is this is something I’m really excited about that I couldn’t wait to get started I’m at almost every game like I said I’ve been covering the team for a while I was around during the LeBron years I actually went to a couple other cities covered a couple different NBA teams I was in Minnesota for a little bit uh covered the Timberwolves I was in Wisconsin for a little bit cover the Milwaukee Bucks of course when I cover those teams they weren’t very good um as I go places coaches tend to get fired as we just saw that here in Cleveland with Cavs head coach former Cavs head coach JB bicker staff um being shown the door a couple of weeks ago at this point or 10 days ago so now we are in a full-fledged coaching search where news came out over the weekend I believe it was late Friday that two more head coaching candidates have been allowed to interview with the Cavs they’ve received permission that’s Johnny Bryant currently the associate head coach of the New York Knicks and we will get to a lot about him later on in the show as well as Chris Quinn who’s the lead assistant in Miami has been with the heat for quite a long time and as I’m sure you all know from social media Once Upon a Time played seven games with the Cleveland Cavaliers so those two coaches are in addition to two coaches that we previously heard about in Kenny Atkinson the lead assistant at Golden State uh former head coach of the Brooklyn Nets also coached with the Clippers was with the Knicks Once Upon a Time as well and James bgo who is a lead assistant in New Orleans with the Pelicans the former head coach of the Charlotte Hornets I’m at the point now where I’ve got my Big Board of coaches it’s so fitting considering that this is NBA Draft season and you see all these big boards floating around and Prospect lists I’ve got that with the haves the Cavs head coaching search where there’s a list of in my Big Board of course like yours I’m sure is bigger than just the four guys that we’ve heard connected to this opening so far but I do have to say that as of right now Kenny Atkinson is the guy for me that’s right at the top of it he’s the guy that I like the most and if he were the one that’s coaching the Cleveland Cavaliers next season when season opens up in October I think that’s a really really good sign for this franchise for this team and to go through what he’s done there are a couple things about him that stand up to me stand out to me that really make me interested in him being the head coach of the Cavs one I know a lot of you out there watched a ton of his games when he was the head coach of the Brooklyn Nets because way back when the Cavs had that 2018 uh Brooklyn pick as part of the Kyrie Irving to Boston Trade so during that season we all watched a ton of Brooklyn Nets games and they it it felt like they won far more games than they should have certainly far more games than any Cavs fan hoped that pick ultimately would turn into colins ton if the Nets were as bad as I think everybody thought they could have been we could be talking about a Cav team that has Luka donic on it right now but instead Kenny ainson I thought was able to really Elevate that team and got the most out of it and that’s something that really matters to me as we talk about who’s going to be the next head coach of the caves because to JB bickerstaff’s credit when he was hired I thought he got the most out of those early teams you look at the team that made the play and I thought he got the most out of that team even if they struggle down the stretch of the Season whether it be due to injuries to Jared Allen and Darius Garland or anything else I thought he got the most out of that team but at a certain point I think voices can grow a little bit stale and I think that you’re not getting the most out of everybody anymore and the team that bicker staff was hired to coach isn’t the team that the Cavs are now and that’s okay teams evolve sometimes change is needed and that gets me right back to Atkinson because I think that there are things that you can point to tangible things on the basketball court that you can point to with him that should make you excited that should you should be able to look at that and say okay he can bring that to Cleveland I think one is the offense I think that what he’s able to do what he was able to do offensively with those Brooklyn teams because those teams weren’t they weren’t winning in the same way that the Cavs have won the last couple of years where yes the Cavs have had a superstar guarden Don in Donovan Mitchell and even before that Darius Garland was an All-Star the year that the team made a play in but that was this has been an organization that for the last several years has been very defense first and we’ve seen that Evan Mobley has been great defensively Jared Allen’s been great defensively Isaac Crow has been good defensively but they’re a team that I think everyone would agree when it has mattered the most they haven’t been able to score enough and you can go and watch the play play offs and I think that the Minnesota series against Dallas was a great great way to look at this Minnesota had the best defense all year and yeah Dallas’s defensive numbers were great after they remade the team at the trade headline but they didn’t lose that series because they weren’t good enough defensively they lost that series because they couldn’t score enough points and I think that’s been one of the biggest problems with the Cavaliers over the last couple of years is their offense just has looked a little outdated at times it’s looked a little too too reliant on Donovan Mitchell and we can get into whether or not Donovan Mitchell will be back and believe me we will talk about that plenty as this summer continues on but I do think that ainson is going to be able to if he is hired as head coach of the Cavs be able to figure out how to make everything work if the Cavs choose to run it back with all four of the core four and we’ll talk about whether or not that’s the correct decision to make probably on tomorrow’s show that’ll be what we lead with but if they do that I think the offense would look better under Atkinson than it did under JB bicker staff I think that would be the case I think that it would be more diverse I think that the spacing would be able to be figured out a little bit more and then the other thing that I do really like about Atkinson is that since he left Brooklyn he spent time around I think at least one very good coach and he spent time around winning being in Golden State yeah the Warriors have I think underachieved the last couple of years for numerous different reasons that we don’t need to get into but since they won that title they’ve underachieved and Atkinson being around for that Championship season I think is very important that he was able to be part of a deep playoff run something that up until that point in his career he really wasn’t able to say that that he had done and that is something that I do find Value in for whoever is going to be the next head coach of the Cavs because this is a team team now and this is an organization where the regular season results they matter but they don’t matter nearly as much as what happens in the postseason that’s what this team is going to be judged upon and having a guy that’s been around postseason success absolutely matters to me as far as the Cons with Atkinson goes because there of course there are pros and cons to all of these guys that we’ll talk about but the con that everyone’s going to immediately throw out is that when Brook built the roster to win it didn’t work with him was that Kenny Atkinson’s fault was that someone else’s fault I don’t know Kyrie IR Kevin Durant didn’t really respond well to Kenny ainson and that’s something that maybe it should give you pause but if you go back and look at what was going on not only in Brooklyn but in the world at that time and part of the reasons as to why it didn’t work out and the one story that everybody knows of course being that he wanted to Jared Allen instead of DeAndre Jordan and some of the veterans on that team disagreed with that that’s the story that is part of the reason why it didn’t work out for him I don’t think that that is something that really would be a a big issue in Cleveland and I think that the experience he’s had since then allows me to sort of Overlook that just a little bit just a little bit up next James brego he’s second on my list and I will tell you why coming up shortly when you’re hiring for small businesses you want to find quality professionals that are right for the role that’s why you have to check out LinkedIn jobs guys I have at times been searching for new jobs it happens people need to find work people need to hire LinkedIn jobs has been the place that I’ve gone each and every time that I have been part of a a search for a new position LinkedIn jobs has been the place that I have gone right away they have everything that you need whether you’re looking to hire whether you’re looking for a new position LinkedIn jobs is the place to go LinkedIn jobs has the tools to help you find the right Professionals for your team if you are hiring and you can do it faster and for free LinkedIn isn’t just another job board LinkedIn has a vast network of more than a billion professionals which makes it the best place to hire it gives you access to professionals you can’t find anywhere else LinkedIn does all that while making the process easy and intuitive hiring is easy when you have that many quality candidates so easy in fact that 86% of small businesses get a qualified candidate within 24 hours post your job for free at linkedin.com lockon NBA that’s linkedin.com lockon NBA to post your job for free terms and conditions do apply so James bgo is the other name that we’ve heard pretty immediately after JB bicker staff was shown the door to he has his name popped up right away as someone that the Cavs were interested in and of course at Cav’s president of basketball operation Kobe alman’s media availability after after the bicker staff firing he had talked about that the team hadn’t really put together a list yet but I do think it’s worth noting that bargo’s name popped up very shortly and then the team has also secured permission to interview him currently he is the lead assistant down in New Orleans previously he had been the head coach of the Charlotte Hornets and I do think that burgo got a bit of a raw deal he was fired after the 2122 season which was the same year the Cavs made the play in well the Charlotte Hornets made the play in as well they were on the other side of the play in bracket they lost the 910 game to the Atlant Hawks and then of course we all know Atlanta would go on to beat the Cavs to secure the eight seed but what bgo was able to do and there’s a common theme here between him and ainson as to why I like these two guys more than I think the rest of the candidate list not that I don’t like other candidates but the common theme Here is I think that they were able to maximize what they were offensively now in Charlotte they were they were a bad defensive team there’s no doubt about that they were struggling on that end but offensively they were one of the best units in the league and I do think especially when that was point when lamelo ball was very early on into his career with the Hornets it’s also feels like the only time he’s really been healthy um throughout the NBA career not that I think there’s a connection there but being able to maximize an offense with a very young guard is a very difficult thing to do in the NBA like you don’t see a ton of guards that are in their first or second year that are able to come in and Thrive right away and I do think that’s part of the reason why so many people thought lamelo was a special Prospect because he was able to come in and I don’t know that impact winning was the right way to phrase it but he was able to grow under James Breo and I think be pretty effective offensively so that’s something that I do if you look at what the Cavs have if Darius Garland is back next year if Donovan Mitchell is back next year hiring James brego as somebody who has maximized back courts in the past could be something that really is appealing when you’re talking about hiring for this opening the other thing that I do really like about James Breo is that he spent time in San Antonio so while he hasn’t exactly been around winning lately um he left San Antonio in 2018 to to take that Charlotte Hornet’s gig and Charlotte finished above 500 once while he was head coach and then he’s been in New Orleans for the last couple of years and the Pelicans have been fine but they haven’t they haven’t been they haven’t seen playoff success that’s the thing that would worry me about brego is that he’s not a a truly playoff tested coach just because it’s been such a long time since he’s been part of a deep playoff run like the last one I do believe would be that 2017 Spurs team that went to the Western Conference finals and they were leading the Warriors in game one and kawhai rolled his ankle on under uh when Zaza pulia walked under him and wasn’t the same but that was the last time that burgo I believe was on a staff that went deep into the playoffs and when you’re were talking about this opening and searching for somebody that is really battle tested as far as playoffs go that might be something that pops up on the the negatives when you’re thinking about bringing him in that he just it’s not that he can’t do it it’s that there’s not a ton of proof that that’s been done because that deep playoff run is something that is sort of missing there up next is Chris Quinn who I believe he’s a pretty popular pick for a lot of Cavs fans that Chris Quinn is a name that pops up he is one of the more well-known assistants in the NBA and the reason to love Chris Quinn as a candidate if you love heat culture and I think there’s an argument there but if you love The Heat culture and you believe that that is something that can be brought with somebody somewhere else like that was a big reason why some people were much higher on the maxu signing than others were last offseason because the thought was well Max Tru was able to do this in Miami what can he bring from Miami to Cleveland it’s not the entire thing with Chris Quinn but that’s part of the equation if you’re a believer in what Miami does rub off then Quinn’s a very good choice a very good choice he has been around a ton of winning even if Miami hasn’t won a title since he been here he uh got to Miami in 2014 so as LeBron was on his way out Chris Quinn was on his way in as an assistant but the Heat have still gone on some pretty deep playoff runs they’ve been to the finals a couple of times while he’s been an assistant he’s got of anybody on this list I believe the most postseason experience and again I think that is something that really really matters and the other thing that I do like about Quinn is that he played in the NBA he wasn’t some great player like he’s a former Cav and you see the picture of him in a Cav’s uniform pop up from time to time on social media he played seven games with the Cavs back I believe in 2013 or 2014 so was a long time ago but he was someone that had to really grind and scratch and Claw for everything he got in the NBA as a player and I do think that those guys especially when they’re guards in particular those type of guys can really make for great coaches I think if you look at someone like a tonl who he was a a bit of a journeyman in the NBA he was definitely a role player in the NBA he had to be very intelligent he had to work really hard for everything he got I’m not trying to compare Chris Quinn to someone like tou but that’s the sort of mold that you look at as okay this guy I love the background that he brings the experiences that he has that’s all awesome stuff and I do think that that is something that makes for a really good head coach in the NBA we’ve seen that time in time again and it it’s not you know it’s not something that is absolutely true it’s not to say that if you’re a star you can’t be a good head coach like Jason kid in Dallas right now was a Hall of Famer as a player turns out he’s a pretty good coach too doing a pretty good job in Dallas that’s something that it’s just worth bringing up that is something that I do think it’s it’s worth talking about when you bring this up up next there’s one more candidate and how much does experience as a head coach matter that’s straight ahead right here locked on Cavs passion drive and patience the formula for winning championships also what keeps your ride or die alive eBay Motors has everything you need to maintain your vehicle and level it up to Peak Performance superchargers roof racks 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what Bryant has accomplished as a coach what he’s been part of as a coach they don’t talk about those things they talk about the relationship ship with Donovan Mitchell and that absolutely does matter it 100% matters he’s coached Mitchell in Utah he’s been with the Knicks for the last couple of years so he has been really around quite a bit of winning obviously those Jazz teams were very good uh when Donovan was there and the Knicks had been very good the last couple of years making it to the second round of the playoffs and you know I think if not for injuries probably would have gone a little bit further in this year’s postseason as well but Bryant has been part of winning and that’s something that should matter too I’m not saying it should matter more or less than what his relationship is with Donovan Mitchell because you have to think if Johnny Bryant’s the guy that the Cavs are hiring you would feel really really good even if you feel good now about Donovan Mitchell returning to the Cavs and signing that contract extension this summer you would feel I think much better if Johnny Bryant is the guy that’s hired as the head coach of the Cavs so he’s the associate head coach in New York he has interviewed for a couple of jobs in the past head jobs in the past I should say obviously hasn’t been picked for one this would be his first head coaching experience which I want to get to in a second but the other thing that I want to mention about Bryant is of the candidates that the Cavs have received permission to interview he’s the youngest of them he’s 38 years old and I do think that’s something that is worth bringing up when you have this discussion because younger coaches I think in the NBA more than any any other sport can relate to the locker room just a little bit better and I think that’s something that could be a really good thing if that’s a possibility for the next head coach of the Cavs that relatability it’s not the be all and all it’s not the most important thing but it’s something that I do think is worth bringing up and then of course the con with if it is Bryant is are the Cavs just doing this to please Donovan Mitchell I don’t think that would be the case I don’t but it’s the question that everybody is going to ask everybody’s going to ask that I mentioned how much having head coaching experience matters because you know we go through this list Kenny ainson has been a head coach James Breo was an interim head coach Once Upon a Time in Orlando then of course was a head coach in Charlotte with the Hornets Chris Quinn has not been a head coach he was like an interim for a game when Eric spuler couldn’t coach Johnny Bryant who I just mentioned hasn’t been a head coach how much does that matter I do believe I would prefer to have somebody considering where the Cavs are at in their position in terms of where where they want to go I do believe that having someone that has been a head coach would be beneficial to this roster and to this organization but as I think about this and part of me hates to make this comparison because it’s just super lofty but part of me thinks it’s pretty go back a decade ago the Golden State Warriors yes we’re going there the Golden State Warriors in 2013 they lost in the second round 2014 they lost in the first round they fired Mark Jackson hired Steve Kerr we know what happened in 2015 we know what happened in 2016 too but what Steve Kerr was able to do was take a group of guys that had been maxed out under a previous coach and take them to a new level and yeah the Cavs don’t have an MVP in what the Warriors had in Steph Curry but at that point Steph Curry hadn’t become Steph Curry how much more does Donovan Mitchell have to grow I don’t know I don’t know that he can get to that Steph Curry level but the situations are pretty similar you look back the last two years Cavs have a first round exit and a second round exit they fired their coach I do think that this group hasn’t been maximized for just how talented they are I think that there’s more that can be gotten out of it and I think having a new voice bringing in a new voice here will be helpful so why do I relate this to experience what was Steve Kerr’s coaching experience before taking over The Warriors in 20145 he didn’t have any he wasn’t a coach at all he had spent time in the sun’s front office he had spent a ton of time on TNT I actually thought he was a really good color commentator on TNT back in the day but he wasn’t someone that came in in with even as much coaching experience as anyone that I’ve talked about on today’s show so that does make you wonder yeah would having someone with coaching experience be nice head coaching experience I should say yeah but I also think that means it’s okay to think outside the box a little bit because we have seen coaches come in and be really good as head coaches right away look at tanl when he was in Cleveland took over midseason was instantly what I thought was an awesome head coach we’ve seen it happen before I think it it can happen in this league more than any other league and that’s something that I do think should be thought about even if you want to bring up someone like JJ reck who you know we haven’t heard him super connected to this Cavs opening yet but it’s something that certainly we can dive into at a later date I wouldn’t write someone a candidate like that off because they don’t have head coaching experience that’s I I think it matters but I don’t think it’s the be all end all at times I kind of think that this can sort of be a crapshoot I do I think that this is something can be a crapshoot if you have coaching experience that’s great if you don’t have coaching experience I think that can be okay too I really do I had a blast doing the show for the first time I can’t wait to get rolling can’t wait to have guests on I can’t wait to talk about the clevand Cavaliers each and every day with you again thank you for making lock on Cavs your first listen every day rate US review us give us five stars help the show grow also be sure to check out what lockdown has launched the first ever National Sports 247 streaming Channel on YouTube and now it’s also available on Amazon Fire TV and the free Fire TV channels again I’m Danny Cunningham new at locked on today was the first episode of me as the lead host locked on Cavs cannot wait to get rolling here really looking forward to it have a great week of show line of shows lined up tomorrow I want to dive into the Cavs opening how it compares to the other opening right now in the Lakers and of course the future of Donovan Mitchell those are I think the two biggest topics that we need to get into with the Cavs but I will talk to you tomorrow have a great day everybody thank you again for making lockon Cavs your first Liston
The Cleveland Cavaliers are looking for their new head coach to lead Evan Mobley, Jarrett Allen, and possibly Donovan Mitchell & Darius Garland. What do the Cavs need in their next head coach?
On Monday’s Locked On Cavs, new host Danny Cunningham (@RealDCunningham) of Cleveland Magazine and 92.3 The Fan makes his hosting debut and introduction before diving into whether or not previous head coaching experience should matter for the Cleveland Cavaliers during the search to replace J.B. Bickerstaff.
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