00:00Joe Varden's big piece out right now, Cavs plan to keep Kenny Atkinson, the coaching staff,
00:05and front office together after Eastern Conference Finals sweep here. So here's the thing. I'm not
00:11saying this is the wrong decision. I understand it on some level, although you are dangerously
00:16close to hearing linear progress at some point this week from the Cavs.
00:22Yes, we've got linear growth. We've never made it to the Conference Finals before without LeBron.
00:25Congratulations. This is an absolute read-the-room moment here, which is a day after you got swept.
00:32There is no possible way you can tell you really thought about what went wrong, what went right,
00:40how to get where you need to be, if less than 24 hours after you got embarrassed on national
00:47television, you've decided you're going to keep your coach and keep your front office. And so I'm
00:53not saying they should have made a different decision. What I'm saying is you probably
00:56should have waited another 48 hours from putting this out there because people are still so furious
01:01and embarrassed that you're going to get a lot of fury from releasing this information now.
01:06They've made up their mind. And part of that is why, like, you know, we had Nick Friedle on and
01:10he's
01:10like, blow it all up. It's like, I, it seems more likely they're going to run it back than blow
01:14it
01:14all up. Like this is not in the Atkinson part of this, you heard Harden in the post game last
01:19night.
01:19He heard Mitchell in his post game, talk about him. Like there's, there's a lot there. Now I
01:24listen, I, I looked into Joe's article and one thing he had in there, uh, he goes, he was hard
01:28on his staff. Numerous league sources said in part, because he felt he couldn't be overly hard on the
01:33players. That's why Harden and Mitchell are going so hard in the pace for Atkinson. He's a players
01:38coach. That's who he is. But think about that for a second. He was killing his coaching staff
01:43because he thought to himself, I can't kill the players. This is the guy you're going to continue on
01:48with. This is the guy he helped. We helped loony tunes. That sounds, he won't stand up to the
01:53players. Of course, the players like him. You're always going to like the guy that lets you get
01:56away with murder. They do love a good doormat in the NBA. And that's what this is. And I, and
02:00credit
02:00to Atkinson 59 years old. He understands how this works. Yeah. It's his last, it's his last road.
02:05If you go after the players, you're not winning that battle. If you make Donovan work his butt off,
02:10or you make Harden work his butt off at this point, they're just going to be like,
02:13they'll JB Bickerstaff you. I don't want to do that. JB wrote him and made him incredibly hard
02:18to, to, to coach them. And it was just one of those things where it's like, you,
02:21this is what happened. So they want the doormat. They want Atkinson and he's going to stay.
02:25Okay. Well, here's the thing. What did Kenny also do in the post season that I think lost them more
02:31games than maybe any other decision? The way he handled the bench was atrocious. And I think he,
02:37I think he rode the bench the way that he did and dropping Tyson in and out of the rotation,
02:43dropping multiple guys in and out of the rotation, over relying sometimes on Struce and, and Wade and
02:48even Schroeder at points. I think he did all those things. Cause he knew I can't go after the
02:54players. Like it makes sense to the stars. Like he alienated one of the reports out there is that
02:58he alienated several guys in the bench. Well, it makes sense. You can't mess with Donovan Mitchell's
03:03playing time. You can't miss with James Harden's playing time. Although a real coach could
03:07but, but Hey, I guess I'll just make an example out of Jalen Tyson. Okay. I mean the, the goal
03:14of
03:14the NBA in many respects as a head coach is keep your stars happy. And he just, he just is,
03:18his
03:18guiding nature and how he does this is within that. And I, I just, it's not good for us long
03:25-term
03:25that's just not good for us long-term. Right. Royce on Twitter saying they wanted to put an end to
03:29the fire Kenny movement before it gained traction. I don't understand this, this philosophy on releasing
03:36this news today. What, what movement it's social media. You think Dan's going to wake up to if
03:43Dan didn't make this announcement right now, or sorry, if Dan, if the Cavs didn't leak this
03:47information right now, you think Dan would wake up two days from now and being like, man, people are
03:53still pissed on Twitter. I guess I should fire the head coach. I can't believe it. People are mad at
03:58Kenny Atkinson. Like think more of Dan Gilbert, uh, before you suggest that Dan Gilbert's like,
04:02I gotta cut the head off the snake. I understand what he's, what he's getting at. The idea that
04:08you just, you just, you take people like me who for the last, for the, I don't know what the
04:11two
04:11o'clock hour, I'm like, not only fire Kenny Atkinson, I got his replacements lined up. I'm
04:16like, how do you get Billy Donovan on the phone? It, it, it just, those conversations do go
04:20away. They stop existing and, uh, and stop existing two days from now to instead. No,
04:25I mean, we'll just, instead we'll just talk about what a goober. We think Kenny Atkinson is
04:29the conversation about him doing a poor job. Won't go away. That part won't did that won't
04:34cease. But the idea of lining up his replacements probably do because we just, there's no need to
04:38talk about it then. 216-474-0092. Uh, the Joe Varn report is out there. The Cavs plan to keep
04:45Kenny Atkinson and the front office together. I just, your general reaction to this, uh, my re again,
04:52I don't like the timing of this and I, I can smell the excuses coming out of independence here and
05:00they're going to start trickling out pretty quickly. And my response to Dan specifically,
05:06cause I, I don't know that anyone has done more of a switch in direction on Dan Gilbert than I
05:11have
05:11in the last decade. I thought during the LeBron stuff, he was very overrated. A lot of the credit
05:16that he was given like spending money is great, but Dan is a Dan used to, and still does a
05:22dovetail
05:23into the decisions at different points and then peace out for a while. Like that being said, I've
05:28really come to respect what Dan does now in this era where a lot of NBA owners in big markets
05:36are
05:36cheaping out to go ahead and save some ducats. I like what Dan has done. Dan has finally done
05:41something with Kobe Oltman and post LeBron that he had never done before LeBron or without LeBron,
05:48right? So this is directly to Dan. Okay. You're going to make this decision. That's fine.
05:54I don't want to hear a damn excuse. I don't want to hear circumstances. I don't want to hear linear
05:59growth or linear progression. I know they're going to talk about it. No, no, no. Give me the straight
06:04dope. They're going to talk about it. We didn't get it done. We, we just, quite frankly,
06:09we failed, but we've had enough success that we think we can have success again. And that's,
06:14that's ultimately what it's going to be. They're going to try to sell you on that idea. We've
06:17had enough success. We were this close. We are, uh, we're right there. We just need to
06:21make a couple of tweaks. Now the tweaks have to be, I think, more extreme than maybe they
06:25realize. Uh, but they have an off season to figure it out between LeBron and Giannis and
06:29everything else. Shams, by the way, uh, also saying he's back for another, what a coattail
06:33writer. We got, we got multiple guys. That absolute, by the way, I didn't see any credit.
06:41No wonder everybody hates Shams. Is there anybody out there that actually like, listen, nobody
06:45really liked Woj either. Dirty secret. Uh, nobody really liked Woj, but man, Shams took
06:51the, I'm whatever Woj playbook was and somehow became less likable. Yeah. Uh, he at least does
06:58that video of him talking about it for a minute. Oh, that's good. Try to make it seem like,
07:01oh yeah, we did this on TV. Yeah. We did that. Of course. Yeah. I don't know. I don't know
07:04when this was recorded. Between Shams and Adam Schefter, can we fire both those jagaloons
07:08into the sun? Shams with this, by the way, Joe Varden had it first. Shams is taking a lot
07:12of heat. And then Adam Schefter for basically just, what is it? Just aping the McNeil tweet?
07:19Yeah, I saw that. And being like, saw it on inside the, Adam, your Michigan men are supposed
07:23to have integrity. We know they don't, but they're supposed to have integrity. When
07:28people call it out to you, you can say, oh, didn't see this. Got to give my man credit
07:33McNeil, some credit. Could have done that. Wouldn't you also think if you're Schefter,
07:37like you just, you don't just find that on the internet. Someone's going to come calling
07:40for their, for their respect or their at least credit in making such a thing. Yeah. Yeah.
07:45You would think so, but he's Adam Schefter. Just dumb. Just dumb. Just a robot of a human
07:49being. So all right. So you hate this or you like this or where are you with this? I just,
07:53to me, it's just pretty dissatisfied. All things considered. To me, the timing is the biggest
07:57boo-boo. There's no way you can know whether you should fire Kenny Atkinson today or not.
08:01There's just no way. And oh, by the way, I wouldn't make a decision on Donovan today. I
08:06wouldn't make a decision on Evan today. Like sometime when you look, guys, you got cornholed
08:12by the Knicks. I mean, you just got railroaded by the New York Knicks in a four game series.
08:19And you're just confident. Oh, Kenny's the right guy. Oh, oh, Kobe. I mean, look what he's
08:25done in the eight years. He's had the job. There's no way you can make a clear and objective
08:31and a clear headed decision today about this. It means you made this decision before you lost
08:36yesterday's game, which probably meant you made it before this series. And that's what
08:41I have the problem with. Yeah. We'll never find out. I do think you can come up and make
08:45your mind about whether or not you want him fired. I think that, I think that I don't
08:47think we need all day on that. I think this is, it's like watching someone try out for American
08:53Ido. I just need, I need 12 seconds. I can tell if you're the next Kelly Clarkson, some
08:56things we don't need time to bake with. Okay. With Atkinson, I don't need time to bake with
09:00the, uh, the way that he's baked enough, the way that he maneuvered himself throughout this
09:05playoffs. And then in the press conferences, you're a schmuck. I don't need a schmuck.
09:09It, it should be studied. Whatever's happened to Kenny Atkinson. I don't know if he just neutered
09:15himself because the players, and he just wants to keep his jog. Again, that might be,
09:20I might just very well be it. He just decided I can't coach the way I'm going to. So I'm
09:24just going to do whatever I think Donovan and James want. And as long as they're happy,
09:29I'm going to have a job. And at 59, that's not the worst business decision that he could
09:32make. I get it. Totally. Don't sound like an idiot in the press conference. Don't do
09:37that. Don't do whatever this was and trying to justify it all. It has been since the trade
09:41in February, he's been confounding with his decisions. And I understand like circumstantially,
09:50I do understand you didn't have a lot of regular season basketball with your team at whole. Got
09:54it. Yeah. That's half the NBA, by the way. Uh, also understand that when you, when you kind
09:59of reconstruct a team, you know, what is it? 30% of a 10 man rotation. When you, when you
10:04put kind
10:04of put those guys in, it's a lot of pressure on the head coach and a head coach has to
10:08know
10:09what buttons he can fire. How do you learn those? Well, you got to have time with your
10:13team. Get it. Yeah. Teams get blown up all the time at the deadline and then still make
10:17better head, uh, headway than they did in this series. So I, I don't really have an excuse.
10:23He was outcoached by Darko. He was outcoached by JB and he was outcoached by Mike Brown.
10:27There was three straight. You're over three. You're gone to me. I just, it's not that it's
10:31not that hard. I can, I know, I already know what they're going to try to do though.
10:34They're going to try to, they're going to try to sell everyone on the idea that it was just
10:37a couple months of Harden and this team with more time is going to be much better and we'll
10:42probably fall forward hook, line and sinker. But I, with Atkinson, you know, the dating
10:45world, they're like, Oh, I got the ick with a guy, right? I got an, I got the ick, something,
10:49something that you see that immediately just makes you be like, I know I'm, I'm good here.
10:55Same thing with Atkinson with myself. I got, I got the Atkinson ick. All right. So what got
10:59you the ick more? Was it the press conferences? Yeah, the press conferences. You just can't come
11:03back from that. Game one was brutal. Game one was definitely like the, Hey, this,
11:07this is, I don't know what he's going to do to redeem himself here, but you just can't
11:11go to the podium and speak the way that he did. To me, it was just, you just can't do
11:15that. To me, it was game one. Game one was the most fireable offense I've ever seen of
11:19anything since David Blatt. You're showing a lack of understanding of everything when he
11:23spoke the way that he did.
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