CLEVELAND — The Cleveland Cavaliers have fired head coach J.B. Bickerstaff amid a disappointing end to the 2023-24 season.
“J.B. is a well-respected NBA coach and an incredible human-being,” said Cavaliers President of Basketball Operations Koby Altman in a statement. “Over the past four years, he helped establish a culture that progressively drove players to become the best versions of themselves. Decisions like these are never easy, particularly when you look back at where this franchise rebuild started under his leadership. The NBA is a unique business that sometimes requires aggressive risk-taking to move a franchise forward and ultimately compete for championships. We owe a ton of gratitude for everything J.B. has contributed to the Cavaliers and his engagement in the Cleveland community. We wish J.B., his wife Nikki and their three children the best in their future endeavors.”
In a post on X (formerly Twitter), ESPN's Adrian Wojnarowski was first to announce that the Cavaliers had dismissed Bickerstaff.
The 45-year-old Bickerstaff departs after spending parts of five seasons as head coach of the Cavaliers, leading the team to back-to-back playoff appearances in each of the last two seasons. The Cavs won 99 regular season games over that span.
Ultimately, it was Cleveland’s disappointing postseason performance that may have most led to Bickerstaff’s firing. Although the Cavaliers did win their first playoff series without LeBron James since 1993, they needed seven games to get past the Orlando Magic in this year's first round. The series against Orlando featured a pair of blowout losses on the road, including a 112-89 loss in Game 4 that saw Cleveland’s nine-point halftime lead vanish amid a 37-10 Magic run in the third quarter.
The Cavs’ season ultimately came to a quick conclusion in the Eastern Conference Semifinals against the top-seeded Boston Celtics. Cleveland was able to split the first two games of the series at the TD Garden, but ultimately lost the last three games as injuries to stars Donovan Mitchell and Jarrett Allen proved too much to overcome.
In 2023, the Cavaliers were bounced out of the first round of the playoffs after winning 51 games in the regular season. The defeat in five games at the hands of the New York Knicks exposed Cleveland’s biggest weaknesses — physicality, outside shooting and depth.
The Cavs hoped that the offseason additions of Max Strus and Georges Niang would address some of those concerns. However, the team struggled at the start of the 2023-24 regular season, leading to rumblings about Bickerstaff’s job security.
The tipping point was the Cavs’ 103-95 loss to the lowly Portland Trail Blazers on Nov. 30. Cleveland squandered an early 16-point lead and were guilty of settling for shots, a fact underscored by them attempting just one free throw in the first 24 minutes — on a defensive three-second technical.
“We’ve said this from the beginning, we want to be a championship-caliber team and we’re not playing like it," said Mitchell, who termed the loss a “turning point.”
Bickerstaff held a closed-door meeting in the locker room following the loss. The Cavs went on to win their next three games and six of nine to stop the rumors about Bickerstaff’s future.
Despite injuries to guard Darius Garland and center Evan Mobley, the Cavaliers began to elevate their play at the start of the new year in January, winning 17 of 18 games between Jan. 3 and Feb. 10. That momentum didn’t last, as Cleveland managed just a 12-17 record after the All-Star break.
Bickerstaff came under fire at the end of the regular season, when the Cavs appeared to intentionally lose their last game against the lowly Charlotte Hornets, keeping them at the No. 4 seed and avoiding a first-round matchup against either Miami or Philadelphia.
Despite missing Mitchell, Garland and Caris LeVert, the Cavs led Charlotte 96-88 to start the fourth quarter and would actually lead by 13 with just over 10 minutes to play. For the final 6:39 of the game, Bickerstaff took out all of his rotational players, opting to finish with a lineup of Isaiah Mobley, Emoni Bates, Pete Nance, Damian Jones and Tristan Thompson.
The Cavs were outscored 18-2 in those final six-plus minutes and lost by 10.
Had they won, the Cavs would have finished with the No. 3 seed, avoiding a matchup with Boston until the Eastern Conference Finals.
“We wanted to give our younger players some unique experiences today, and we did that,” Bickerstaff explained after the game.
Bickerstaff arrived in Cleveland in 2019 as associate head coach under John Beilein. Upon Beilein’s resignation in February 2020, Bickerstaff assumed the title of Cavs head coach and guided the team to a 5-6 record prior to the cancellation of the season due to the COVID-19 pandemic.
After a 22-50 season in 2020-21, the Cavs began to turn around under Bickerstaff in 2021-22, winning 44 games before bowing out in the Play-In Tournament. On December 25, 2021, Bickerstaff signed a multi-year contract extension with Cleveland. “J.B. Bickerstaff is, with all certainty, the right head coach to lead this franchise into what we believe is a very promising future,” Altman said at the time.