BOSTON — After Cleveland saw its season end with a 113-98 loss to the Boston Celtics in Game 5 of the Eastern Conference semifinals on Wednesday night, Cavaliers coach JB Bickerstaff said he wants to remain the head coach of the team.
“Yeah,” Bickerstaff said when asked that during his postgame news conference. “We’ve continued to build this the right way. Every year we’ve improved, and we continue to improve, in the play-ins, in the playoffs, winning a round… the players have improved. The guys have had great years.
“This is the place I want to be.”
When Bickerstaff was later asked if it was the place he hoped to be, he laughed and said, “I mean, no one’s ever told me I’m not.
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“So I’ll keep showing up until they tell me not to.”
ESPN’s Adrian Wojnarowski, citing sources, reported Wednesday that the Cavaliers plan to take some time to evaluate Bickerstaff’s future, but the organization remains fond of him. Bickerstaff has been Cleveland’s head coach for more than four seasons, having led the franchise to back-to-back playoff berths, including winning a first-round series against the Orlando Magic in these playoffs, a feat the franchise did not. He had achieved. done since 2018, and hadn’t been without LeBron James on the roster since 1993.
But Bickerstaff’s future is far from the only question surrounding the Cavaliers as they head into the offseason. The biggest question is what the future holds for Cavaliers star guard Donovan Mitchell, who missed Game 5 with a left calf strain, the same injury that kept him out of Game 4.
Mitchell, who was acquired by the Cavaliers 18 months ago for a package of Lauri Markkanen, Collin Sexton, and several future first-round picks, has had back-to-back All-Star seasons in Cleveland and was spectacular in these playoffs before arriving. injured. He became the second Cavalier in history, along with James, to score at least 25 points in six consecutive playoff games.
Now, he has to decide if he wants to commit to Cleveland in the future, as he has one year left on his contract before a player option for the 2025-26 season.
According to ESPN’s Bobby Marks, Mitchell could sign a four-year, $208 million extension with the Cavaliers.
Because Mitchell did not play, he did not speak to the media Wednesday night.
When asked about the situation the Cavaliers have built around Mitchell, Bickerstaff said there are a lot of things that should be attractive to someone like Mitchell when deciding what he wants to do.
“We have a good team,” Bickerstaff said. “We have good individual players, we have players with a lot of character who are concerned about winning. And any time you have that, you give yourself a chance.”
“I’d love to see what we look like when we’re full for a full season, what pressure we can put on the league from that standpoint. But we have a good basketball team, guys that want to win and guys that I want to get better.”
Health wasn’t just an issue in the playoffs for Cleveland, as Mitchell missed the final two games of the Cavaliers’ stretch and starting center Jarrett Allen missed the final eight with a bruised rib. During the regular season, Cleveland’s top four players (Mitchell, Allen, Darius Garland, and Evan Mobley) played just 28 games together and outscored their opponents by just 2.2 points per 100 possessions in the 392 minutes they shared the court.
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The season had been very promising, but the Cavaliers did not seem to be on the same page, with Bickerstaff and several players, including Max Strus, admitting that the team battled a lot of adversity.
Now Cleveland heads into the offseason with no clarity on what its future will look like and with some very important questions to answer about its overall direction, including the future of its head coach and star player.
“We make a leap every year, so hopefully next year we make another leap,” Garland said. “Hopefully we’ll be fully healthy in the Eastern Conference finals and just take another leap. I’ve come a long way since I was drafted. I went from 19 wins to being in the conference semifinals, so I’ll take it.”, just to keep getting better every year.”
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