Cleveland Cavaliers head coach J.B. Bickerstaff sat in a Cleveland Browns meeting room with three of his assistants and might have been tempted to slump in his chair like an overwhelmed student.
In May, he brought associate head coach Greg Buckner, and assistant coaches Luke Walton and J.J. Outlaw to Berea for Browns organized team activities. As they observed part of the NFL’s offseason ramp-up period that includes educating players on schemes, Bickerstaff’s intentions were noble. He hoped all would broaden their knowledge of coaching methods while Bickerstaff took another step in his growing friendship with Browns head coach Kevin Stefanski.
But as Stefanski and his staff took turns addressing the group, Bickerstaff was befuddled.
“Just the speed at which they talk and the cadence and their terminology, it’s like a foreign language,” Bickerstaff says.
Save for Outlaw, the son of a former NFL defensive back who played wide receiver at Villanova University and went to training camp with the Philadelphia Eagles in 2006-07, the Browns’ language was lost in translation.
“He’s the only one who had a clue,” Bickerstaff says.
The roles were reversed during the Cavs’ 2022-23 season when Bickerstaff invited Stefanski to hang out in the locker room before a game.
“I got to watch him go through his pregame routine and watch his coaches talk to the players about the game-plan adjustments,” Stefanski says. “Those are the type of things that are fun for us to see in a different sport. There are so many similarities and so many differences we can both learn from.”
Stefanski also brought some Browns to the Cavs’ practice facility in Independence before that season. He sat in the stands at Rocket Mortgage FieldHouse when the Cavs hosted the New York Knicks in the 2023 playoffs.
Those experiences are just part of a relationship between Stefanski and Bickerstaff built on similarities. Bickerstaff is 44, Stefanski 41. Both have three children. Bickerstaff’s are 10, 11 and 12; Stefanski’s 8, 11 and 13. Both grew up as Philadelphia Eagles fans, a passion Bickerstaff retains. Stefanski played defensive back for the University of Pennsylvania. Bickerstaff was a forward at Oregon State and Minnesota.
At its heart, their friendship is rooted in the fact that they are sons of NBA lifers, and that includes an
unusual twist.
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Bickerstaff’s father Bernie, 80, the Cavs’ senior basketball advisor, got his first job in the league in 1973. He served as head coach in Seattle, Denver, Washington, Charlotte and with the Los Angeles Lakers. He also was president and general manager of the Nuggets and general manager of the Bobcats. Ed Stefanski, 69, held general manager roles with the New Jersey Nets, Memphis Grizzlies, Philadelphia 76ers, Toronto Raptors and is now senior advisor to Detroit Pistons owner Tom Gores.
Starting in 2014, Ed Stefanski spent four seasons as executive vice president of player personnel in Memphis, where he closely watched the coaching career of J.B. Bickerstaff, David Fizdale’s lead assistant from 2016-18. Ed Stefanski saw the obstacles Bickerstaff was trying to overcome, the same kind of challenges Kevin was facing during his 14 years with the Vikings.
The elder Stefanski became a mentor to J.B. Bickerstaff and watched him take over after Fizdale was fired with a 7-12 record in 2017-18.
“Ed is a lot of the reason why I ended up getting the opportunity in Memphis,” Bickerstaff says. “He was really invested in what I was doing. He was looking out for me. He still sends me text messages on every holiday. Because he understood what Kevin was going through, he had an understanding of what I was really going through. He would talk to me about opportunities that Kevin interviewed for, was offered and at the end of the day wasn’t able to move.
“There were so many different things that got kind of in the way. But at the end of the day, it led us both here. I felt like I knew Kevin before I actually knew Kevin because Ed and I spoke so much about him.”
Bernie Bickerstaff has known Ed Stefanski since 1999, when Nets General Manager John Nash offered the elder Stefanski, at age 44 and in the mortgage banking business for nearly 20 years, his first full-time NBA job as a college scout.
During both careers, Ed Stefanski liked teaching and always tried to help those around him.
He thought so much of Bernie Bickerstaff that he invited him to be on the search committee when the Pistons hired Dwane Casey, the head coach from 2018-23 now working in Detroit’s front office.
“We hit it off very well in Memphis right away,” Ed Stefanski says of J.B. Bickerstaff. “I knew J.B.’s father, he’s just a wonderful human being. Very fond of him, so maybe that had something to do with it. All the assistant coaches we had in Memphis, it was a young group, and it was not an easy situation at all. We had a good team, but the players all had different personalities and egos. J.B. was a big positive guy on our staff, assisting coach Fizdale.
“There’s no doubt in my mind when I was working with J.B., I knew eventually he would be a head coach. Now, there’s great opportunity in front of him.”
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Kevin Stefanski and J.B. Bickerstaff share the same philosophies, which Bickerstaff says goes back to their fathers.
“I think it has a lot to do with our upbringing,” Bickerstaff says. “I know my relationship with Ed and how he treats people. I know how my dad has always treated people. That’s one of the things I think is extremely important — how we interact as human beings every single day. Kevin is the same way. We have a tough job, but it’s about the human beings more than it is about the sport.”
What do they admire about each other? Bickerstaff appreciates Stefanski’s preparation. Stefanski went in a more personal direction.
“He does an awesome job in how he treats his players, how honest he is with his players,” Stefanski says. “I think he’s very, very authentic, both in the media, on the sidelines, I’m sure behind closed doors he’s very authentic, which I admire. I like going to games and watching him coach. I marvel at those guys in the NBA who have to do it 82 times a year because that’s an incredible grind.”
Ed Stefanski sees a lot similarities between the two.
“He doesn’t get way too high, and he doesn’t get way too low. He has an even keel about him, which I think plays well in professional sports, especially when you’re the lead guy,” Ed Stefanski says of Bickerstaff.
Bickerstaff saw the friendship with Kevin Stefanski deepened around a specific event: when police officers murdered George Floyd on May 25, 2020, in Minneapolis. Bickerstaff had coached the Cavs’ final 11 games in 2019-20 after coach John Beilein stepped down. As protests raged, Bickerstaff and Stefanski were preparing for their first full seasons in charge. Stefanski was an assistant coach with the Minnesota Vikings before being hired to coach the Browns.
Two months into a global pandemic, they leaned on each other to navigate the social justice crisis.
“We began talking about how we were going to maneuver as people in this city in positions of leadership and working with our guys. Our relationship just kind of grew from there.” Bickerstaff says. “It was bigger than sports, and it was about our commitment to our community and human beings. It wasn’t just a conversation that we had about Xs and Os. Now we started to have conversations about leading young men through turbulent times and purposes that were bigger than what our day-to-day jobs were.”
Stefanski saw it the same way.
“It was an interesting time for me and J.B., where we were in our careers and with leading young men in such a divisive time in our country,” Stefanski says. “We had some real honest conversations about what we were thinking and what we were hearing and how we were talking to our team and how we were listening to our team. It was a ripe time to have honest conversations and that certainly happened between J.B. and myself.”
Ed Stefanski thought Floyd’s murder “affected Kevin a lot.” During that time, Stefanski took his family to a local protest.
“I know he made a big emphasis on it with his team and in the community,” Ed Stefanski says. “I can see where he and J.B. would join forces for something that was so important, not just to the community, but to the country. That probably just strengthened everything for both of them.”
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The two don’t always talk about national issues or basketball strategy. Sometimes their chats are lighthearted.
“We talk about everything. That’s the fun part about it, there are no secrets that we keep from one another,” Bickerstaff says. “I was asking him how and where does he take his wife out to dinner? Small things like that. ‘How often are you out in public? How do you maneuver through those things when you’re with your kids?’”
They also commiserate about the time they’re missing with their children.
“We talk about where we put our kids in basketball, in AAU. How they’re being coached and who they’re being coached by,” Bickerstaff says. “It’s more difficult because you can’t be there. We’re going on the road or he’s in meetings until 10 o’clock and the kids are asleep. We share in those more painful experiences and try to help each other through those moments.”
Their most visible time together happened by accident. In February, Stefanski attended a St. Ignatius-St. Edward boys high school basketball game. Bickerstaff was also there with guards Donovan Mitchell and Darius Garland to watch Buckner’s son, Ace, who played for St. Ignatius.
“We didn’t plan to be there at the same time. He just happened to be off and he came,” Bickerstaff says of Stefanski.
“I joked with him his entire staff was there. I said, ‘J.B., are you going to have a staff meeting here?’” Stefanski says. “That was cool. I love high school sports and so does J.B., and he’s done a great job supporting his staff.
“I’ve been to many of those games, I try to sneak in and sneak out. It’s fun to watch young kids compete.”
When it comes to the times Stefanski needs a sounding board, he appreciates he has Bickerstaff to offer a different perspective.
“The stuff we deal with, the tough parts about our job, we can commiserate and provide counsel to each other,” Stefanski says. “Unless you’re in that seat, it’s hard to describe some of the things that come across your desk.
“He knows that I’ve got his back and I know the same. It’s just helpful to have a guy in town that I know I can text, and he’s going to get right back to me, he can jump on the phone. I’m very blessed to have that.”
Bernie Bickerstaff, who has been in the NBA for 50 years, never had such a close friendship with someone in another professional sport. But he realizes the value in it.
“The exchanging of ideas and concepts, you have to become good listeners, and I think that’s what they’ve done. I think the relationship is really genuine,” Bernie Bickerstaff says. “I’ve seen it. I think it’s great to have relationships like that, especially when they’re from different sports. You can divulge conversations and you can talk about your players. We all need somebody to vent to that you trust. It’s about people and we need more of that in terms of people who care. And it’s important to be able to trust.”
Even when hectic times lead to gaps in their conversations, J.B. Bickerstaff knows Stefanski will eventually
surface.
“There’s no pattern of our conversation. A win, it’s a text sometimes. A loss, it’s a text sometimes,” Bickerstaff says. “Sometimes we get so caught up in our own stuff that we will get lost from it. But at the same time, out of nowhere when it seems like you need it most, there’s a text message, ‘Just checking on you. How you doing?’”
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