Feb 18, 2023; Salt Lake City, UT, USA; The NBA logo on the court at Huntsman Center. Mandatory Credit: Kirby Lee-USA TODAY Sports
A lot may be at stake for one particular NBA head coach this postseason.
Speaking this week with Hoops Wire, an anonymous league executive said that Cleveland Cavaliers coach JB Bickerstaff will likely be coaching for his job in the playoffs this year. The executive also claimed that Bickerstaff was nearly fired by the Cavs earlier in the season.
“JB could get fired if the Cavs don’t make it to the conference finals,” the executive was quoted as saying. “He was almost fired earlier in the season before the team got its act together.
“There are people inside that organization who can’t fathom how a team with Donovan Mitchell and Darius Garland is so poor at scoring the ball,” added the exec. “JB is 100 percent on the hot seat, and he knows it.”
The Cavs currently sit at 46-33 this season and ripped off a torrid stretch of 17 wins in 18 games right before the All-Star break. But things have gone south for them lately as they are just 5-11 over the last month and have dropped to fifth in the East (just two games above the play-in zone).
Bickerstaff, 45, is in his fourth full season as coach of the team after taking over for John Beilein, who resigned in the middle of the 2019-20 campaign. His overall record in Cleveland is just O.K. at 168-158 (.515), and Bickerstaff still has yet to make it out of the first round of the playoffs since taking over.
The team may be willing to give Bickerstaff some leeway with the up-and-down regular season, especially with foundational players such as Mitchell, Garland, and Evan Mobley all missing significant time at various points due to injuries. But Bickerstaff has been the subject of hot-seat speculation for some time now, and the hourglass may be up if he oversees another early Cavs postseason exit this year.
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