New Cavaliers coach Kenny Atkinson said he has plenty of reasons to believe in the team’s backcourt of Donovan Mitchell and Darius Garland.
And he fully intends to make it work. Same goes for the frontcourt of Evan Mobley and Jarrett Allen.
The very reason the Cavs hired Atkinson is because they believe he is the man who get the Cavs to rise to another level. That’s especially the case with Mobley and Garland, an All-Star a few seasons back.
Atkinson sat down with Hoops Wire contributor John Sabol of Fox 8 News to discuss Garland, Mobley, his coaching style, and a whole lot more. Watch the entire interview in the video directly below.
“The way I look at it is we have two All-Star guards,” Atkinson said. “It’s on the coaching staff to figure that out. You put that responsibility on yourself. And they have fit before. It’s just finding the schemes that work best, finding the rotations”
Atkinson shared similar thoughts on Allen and Mobley.
“We’ve got that defensive anchor,” he said of the Cavaliers bigs. “(On offense) it’s a little bit getting it figured out with the spacing.”
Atkinson coached the Nets from 2016-20 and went 118-170 in the regular season and 1-4 in the playoffs. He was fired just days before the season shut down as a result of the COVID pandemic in March 2020.
He then spent 2020-21 as an assistant with the Los Angeles Clippers, before joining Steve Kerr and the Warriors as an assistant a year later. Atkinson takes over for J.B. Bickerstaff, fired as coach after five-plus seasons.
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