BOSTON — The Cavaliers are finished for the season after falling in five games to the Boston Celtics in the Eastern Conference Semifinals. It had been a year of such high hopes, but injuries and inconsistency were just too much to overcome.
Now everyone's wondering: Does Cleveland's head coach expect to stick around?
"No one's told me I'm not," J.B. Bickerstaff told reporters following the Cavs' 113-98 defeat in Game 5, "so I'll keep showing up until they tell me not to."
According to multiple reports — including from The Athletic and ESPN's Adrian Wojnarowski — the Cavaliers will "take time" to contemplate the future of Bickerstaff, who remains well-liked within the organization. Part of the reason for the holdup might be a lack of big-name candidates to replace him.
For an outsider's perspective, this all might seem like a dumb exercise, especially since the club did manage to win its first playoff series in six years. Bickerstaff has been at the helm for most of this rebuild, guiding Cleveland to a 170-159 record since taking over for John Beilein in February of 2020.
But context is everything, and this situation requires a great deal of it.
The Cavaliers burst on the scene in 2021-22 as a surprising playoff contender, only to fade in the final weeks and be knocked out in the play-in tournament. That offseason, the front office chose to jumpstart the rebuild by trading for All-Star guard Donovan Mitchell, adding to an exciting young core that already included Darius Garland, Jarrett Allen, and Evan Mobley.
Things looked promising, until 2022-23 ended with an embarrassing first-round loss to the New York Knicks, a second straight failure in crunch time. Bickerstaff's future was somewhat in doubt then, though it doesn't appear the front office ever strongly considered moving on, and instead the team was seemingly able to improve with the additions of Max Strus and Georges Niang.
Yet this season felt like every kind of roller coaster you could think of, with the Cavs hovering around .500 early and all of their stars dealing with major injures at some point. Bickerstaff acknowledged the circumstances, and expressed gratitude for the effort his players showed throughout.
"This has been a difficult year for us, for a bunch of different reasons, and they never found a time to fold on each other, "he said. "All they did was figure out ways to compete."
And compete they did, rising to as high as second in the East during the winter months. Then the wheels fell off again.
Cleveland finished the regular season on a 13-18 skid, limping into the playoffs and needing seven tough games to get past an Orlando Magic team they had strategically sought to face. By the time Boston arrived, Mitchell, Allen, and Caris LeVert were all ailing, making an already tough task virtually impossible.
"I would love to see what we look like when we're whole," Bickerstaff admitted.
Still, the Cavaliers never quit, keeping even Game 5 close until the fourth quarter. Unfortunately, the strong effort was overshadowed by lingering concerns, such as the disappointing play of Strus and Niang along with the alarming regressing of Garland (4 of 17 for 11 points).
"I trust [team President] Koby [Altman] and the front office that they'll make the right decisions to continue to improve this team," Bickerstaff said on what changes could be made to the roster. "I'm sure we'll talk about that and we'll go from there."
For his part, Bickerstaff wants to be around to see any changes through.
"We've continued to build this thing the right way," he stated. "This is definitely a place I want to be."
