The Cleveland Cavaliers lost Game 5 to the Boston Celtics on Wednesday night and were eliminated from the postseason.
It’s unfair to fault the Cavs for how things went in this series. The Celtics finished the regular season with the best record in basketball and have been heavy favorites to win the Eastern Conference for most of the year. Boston had the better team, and that’s before factoring in the plethora of injuries to key players for the Cavs. All-NBA guard Donovan Mitchell missed the final two games with a calf injury, center Jarrett Allen didn’t play in the entire series due to a rib injury and swingman Caris LeVert. The bumps and bruises that others are playing through don’t need to be mentioned for the point to be made.
If everything would have gone perfectly for the Cavs, they still may not have won this series. Once so many negatives piled up, it became too much.
The Cavs battled in both Games 4 and 5. They deserve credit for that. It would have been easy for this team to lie down and be steamrolled by one of the best teams in the NBA. They didn’t, and there’s something commendable about that, even if there aren’t trophies given out in professional sports for trying hard.
The book now closes on the 2023-24 season and brings forth an offseason filled with more questions than answers.
The Donovan Mitchell Question
When the Cavaliers introduced Mitchell to the media in September of 2022 he was asked about wanting to be in New York instead of Cleveland. Since that moment, questions have swirled about Mitchell’s desire to remain on the Cavaliers. He has one fully-guaranteed year remaining on his contract and a player option to terminate his deal a year early, meaning he can be a free agent in the summer of 2025.
This summer is the pressure point between Mitchell and the Cavaliers. He is eligible to sign a contract extension with the team and lock in a long-term future with Cleveland. If he chooses to not do so, the weight of Mitchell’s potential pending free agency may be his way of asking out of town. That would leave the Cavs a couple of options: Dealing Mitchell this summer, hoping to recoup some of the assets the team gave Utah when it traded for Mitchell; Or the team could opt to hang onto Mitchell without a commitment from him to stay in Cleveland and push its chips in on a deep playoff run with a potentially revamped roster, hoping that’s enough to keep Mitchell around. That would risk him walking away in free agency next summer with the Cavs getting nothing in return for the guy that has been the second-best basketball player the franchise has ever had.
In Mitchell's two years in Cleveland, he's done nothing but embrace the city and the franchise. It can be easy to spot players in a locker room that would rather be anywhere else. Guys in the NBA find themselves unhappy with their situations all the time. Mitchell hasn't appeared that way in Cleveland. That doesn't mean he wants to be on the Cavs for the rest of his career, but he hasn't appeared to be someone that can't wait to catch the first flight out of Cleveland and never come back, either.
This won’t be the question that’s answered first this offseason, but it’s the most important one.
The Rest of the Core
For the past couple of seasons the organization has touted its “Core Four” of Mitchell, Allen, Darius Garland and Evan Mobley. Three of them – Mitchell, Allen and Garland – have already been All-Stars. Mobley has the makings of a future All-Star and is already a Hall of Fame-level defender.
On paper, that group should be good enough to perennially compete at the top of the Eastern Conference.
In actuality, each member of that group cannot be maximized as currently constructed. Retaining Mitchell should be the top priority. If Mitchell chooses to sign an extension with the Cavaliers, bringing back all three of Allen, Garland and Mobley might not be the best idea.
The pairing in the back court between Garland and Mitchell may work. Mitchell has played some of the best basketball of his career with Garland beside him on the floor. It hasn’t maximized Garland, but his first season with Mitchell in Cleveland was far better than his second, which featured multiple injuries that caused him to miss time, including a fractured jaw in December.
Betting on Garland making a leap forward next year after this nightmare of a season may be wise for the Cavs. He might not reach his full potential by playing with Mitchell, but he can still be very good. Maybe searching for a trade partner for Garland is the route the team wants to take this summer, but his value on the market is far from its apex after the season he had. Betting on Garland to return to All-Star form could prove to be smart.
Things are a little more complicated in the front court with Mobley and Allen.
Mobley entered the league as the No. 3 overall pick in 2021. He immediately showed flashes on offense and was a tremendous defender. Three seasons later, those two things still describe Mobley. He’s a great defender and shows flashes on offense – like his 33 points on Wednesday night.
In the series against the Celtics, Mobley averaged 21.4 points per game on 62% shooting from the floor. All of that, obviously, came with Allen watching from the bench. The flashes for Mobley come more frequently when he has more space to operate, as he did against the Celtics. He’s still far from a perfect player on that end of the floor, but the potential for him to be an offensive focal point still exists.
It may be much easier to reach if he shifts to center full-time and Allen is moved this summer in a trade.
This isn’t a knock on Allen. He had a fantastic season for the Cavs and, after a disappointing postseason last year, was terrific in the playoffs before being injured at the end of Game 4 against Orlando. Many teams across the NBA would be happy to employ him. He’s a great rim defender and has soft touch offensively.
But for Mobley to flourish he needs more space. Playing alongside a big man that isn’t a threat from the perimeter doesn’t allow for that.
Leadership Changes
The hot topic amongst fans in this city – on what at times feels like an annual basis – tends to point to the job security of the head coach and/or lead decision-maker in the front office. This has been true plenty of times for the Cleveland Browns and far less frequently for the Cleveland Guardians.
It’s the world we live in and it’s the conversation fans want to have about the Cavaliers with head J.B. Bickerstaff and president of basketball operations Koby Altman.
As wild as it sounds, Bickerstaff is one of the longest-tenured head coaches in the NBA. He took over the team just before the pandemic arrived in 2020 and just completed his fourth full-season at the helm. Only five head coaches in the NBA have been in their positions longer than Bickerstaff has. The four that have been in place the longest – San Antonio’s Gregg Popovich, Miami’s Erik Spoelstra, Golden State’s Steve Kerr and Denver’s Michael Malone – have all won at least one championship, with Malone’s Nuggets currently on a quest to repeat after winning it all last year. The other coach is Memphis’ Taylor Jenkins, who was hired roughly eight months before Bickerstaff.
Maybe the Cavs decide to move on from Bickerstaff, or maybe the team still feels he’s the best person to lead this team from the sidelines. While Bickerstaff has consistently gotten his teams to play hard – with these final two games against Boston a prime example – the past two groups haven’t been maximized. He’s built great defensive units in Cleveland, but the offense hasn’t been good enough, particularly in the playoffs. In the last three seasons – it’s unfair to hold the 2020-21 season’s futility against Bickerstaff – the Cavaliers haven’t played their best basketball when it mattered most. That has to count for something, too. There are reasons why the Cavaliers should move on from Bickerstaff, just as there are reasons why he should be retained.
Sometimes in professional sports, there needs to be change in leadership after a certain period of time, no matter how successful a coach may be. Messages can grow stale as time passes and sometimes the right coach for one group might not be the right coach for the next group, or what that group transforms into. There are reasons why the Cavaliers should move on from Bickerstaff, just as there are reasons why he should be retained. That doesn’t make the coach good or bad, it’s more about fit. In the coming days we’ll find out whether or not the Cavs view Bickerstaff as the right fit.
No matter what happens, this summer should be one of the most interesting ones the Cavaliers have had in roughly a decade.
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