Kenny Atkinson isn’t sitting on a truly hot seat yet, but the Cavaliers are already close enough to the edge that the conversation has started.
Eight games into the season, fans are asking how long the coach has before the pressure turns into something more serious. According to cleveland.com Cavs beat reporter Chris Fedor, the answer is simple for now: not very close. Still, the bigger picture around the team makes the situation worth watching.
On the Wine and Gold Talk podcast, Fedor said the Cavaliers don’t operate like a franchise that reacts to every rough patch with panic.
“This is just not a franchise that has acted emotionally,” Fedor said. “They have taken a levelheaded approach. They’ve tried to take a step back, take the emotions out of it and try to make the best possible decisions, both from a roster standpoint and from a coaching standpoint.”
That has long been the way under president of basketball operations Koby Altman, and it means a couple of bad losses - even against Philadelphia and New York - aren’t going to trigger an immediate move. But that doesn’t mean Atkinson has total security.
The pressure comes from the expectations attached to this group. Cleveland reached the Eastern Conference Finals last season and was swept, and that result doesn’t get treated as progress anymore. It becomes the bar the team has to clear.
Podcast co-host Ethan Sands put it plainly: getting to the conference finals and getting swept is not the end point. It’s the next hurdle.
And the front office’s offseason decisions - from re-signing James Harden to extending Donovan Mitchell to betting big on Peyton Watson - show belief in the current core. That puts the responsibility on Atkinson to get the most out of it.
There’s also the reality of the roster right now. Fedor pointed out that the Cavaliers are dealing with legitimate injury issues, which makes any early-season judgment harder to trust. Jaylon Tyson has missed time, Peyton Watson is managing a hamstring, Jarrett Allen has been listed as questionable for Friday’s game, and Sam Merrill is dealing with an elbow issue.
Still, Fedor didn’t dodge the uncomfortable question of what happens if this goes off the rails. In his view, the organization would only have a few major ways to shake things up.
“If we’re just having an honest conversation, how do you get drastically better? Well, you can change the coach, or you can change the roster, right?”
Fedor said. “Three things come to mind if they want to drastically change this thing.
If everything goes wrong and this doesn’t turn around and it ends in disappointment and a roster that underachieves, they look at the possibility of trading Jarrett, they look at the possibility of trading Evan, or they fire Kenny.”
Sands added that Cleveland has seen a midseason coaching change work before, pointing to the 2016 championship run. “Bringing in a new coach is something that they’ve seen work and win a championship,” he said. “Not to say that this is the 2016 team or anything like that, but that is something that we’ve had precedent for.
“But we also have the historical context of if a team trades for an All-NBA caliber player, the likelihood that they go to the championship and win the championship are slim to none.”
Fedor also poured cold water on the idea that a deadline deal could easily land a true franchise-changing star. Outside of a hypothetical Nikola Jokic availability, he said the names that might come up - Devin Booker, Lauri Markkanen and Domantas Sabonis - don’t represent the kind of leap that would justify tearing the roster apart.
So the Cavaliers aren’t at the point of making a move. Not yet. But the patience has limits, and the pressure around Atkinson is already building in the background.
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