A renewed energy and enthusiasm permeated the Cleveland Cavaliers’ practice facility on Tuesday morning in Independence, as team president Koby Altman and head coach Kenny Atkinson addressed the media for the first time since May’s premature playoff exit.
“I like our toughness. I like our makeup. I like our identity. I love our leadership,” Atkinson stated. “From my perspective, we have what we need to compete for this championship from a character makeup.”
“Don't take this for granted,” added Altman, who is again doubling down on internal growth from his core players. “This is a special group. This is a special era, and we hope to encapsulate that with some real playoff success and a championship to come. But this group has accomplished a lot, and they're still young and hungry and still growing.”
With a full offseason and less of a “hair on fire” scenario for Atkinson going into his second season at the helm, the Cavs’ coach emphasized minor tweaks over wholesale changes.
“I've seen that [overreaction] happen, where you go, ‘Man, we lost to this, we’ve got to change everything,’ and then that can end up hurting you,” Atkinson said. “But it really starts with our best players, and that's what good coaches do. I think they plan your system and your identity around your best players, and I feel like we're in a really good place…
“I think we could be a more active team. I think we could be a little more of an aggressive team. Talking about the possession games, creating more turnovers. So I do think you'll see a kind of added level of intensity defensively. But we have a great system in place.”
Here are six standout moments from Tuesday's press conference at Cleveland Clinic Courts.
There’s another jump to come for Evan Mobley
The Evan Mobley hype train may have left the station long ago, but there’s still time to buy a ticket for the next car. After earning his first NBA Defensive Player of the Year and All-NBA Second Team honors, the seven-foot forward is set on becoming an MVP candidate.
Altman is blown away by how much he has matured. He took the initiative to host a player-led mini-camp in Los Angeles over the summer, backing the notion of his “locked in” mentality: “He is really serious about taking that leap to being a top-five player in the league.
“He's still 24 years old, but now he's becoming a grown man in terms of his body, his emotions, his maturity level – although he's always been super mature for his age. I think he's ready to take that next step. And, I say it all the time, we go as he goes, as he continues to elevate his level, our organization continues to grow, and we're super excited for him.”
Atkinson plans to use him as a hub even more at the elbows to make plays and initiate: “You just sense that he's ready to make another jump. The seriousness in which he approaches the offseason from a body perspective and from a basketball perspective, he's different. I don't know how to exactly define that, but I feel like there's a confidence brewing here that maybe we haven't seen before.
“And he was a confident player last year because he affects winning. He knows he can win in this league, but I feel like there's kind of another level coming. And I love that it started with his body. He had to get stronger. And I think you're going to see that when the season starts.”
Darius Garland is making significant progress in injury recovery
Nobody wants to see a dynamic young talent go down to injury, but that’s what happened at the worst possible time to Darius Garland in last year’s playoffs. A bothersome left toe that required a custom-made spacer to alleviate the pain severely limited him in the team’s second-round series vs. the Indiana Pacers.
Three-and-a-half months ago, the Cavs announced that Garland underwent successful surgery to repair his left toe. While it didn’t allow him to be on his feet for some time, it did allow him to focus on his upper body over the summer.
“I think this injury might be a blessing in disguise because I know he's really paid attention to the strength part,” Atkinson added. “That's his next step.”
“He had a really good offseason, only because he focused on the things that we've been talking about for a long time, which is weight room strength,” Altman added. “And because he couldn't touch a basketball for a month, he had to just lift. And so he's stronger, he's more stout, he has a great attitude.”
On Tuesday, Altman provided an update on the All-Star point guard’s rehab.
“His mental is in the right place. He's back on the court now. He's doing basketball activities now. The toe looks good, he feels good,” Altman said. “We're certainly not gonna put a timetable on it, but he's going to start to participate in limited team activities in training camp, very limited.
“I think for him, the biggest thing is how do we start to ramp him up from a conditioning standpoint. And that's not something that can happen in two weeks.”
De’Andre Hunter’s allure is too hard to ignore
When the Cavs were in the middle of one of their long winning streaks, the front office bolstered the roster by acquiring De’Andre Hunter before the trade deadline in late February. He had to adjust on the fly and did so as well as the team could have asked.
Before a media member got into an all-too-familiar question about the small forward position, particularly because Max Strus will be sidelined until winter time at the least, Altman interrupted with a clever retort: “Well, we fixed that at the deadline with De’Andre Hunter.”
Despite not penciling him in the starting five, which he didn’t want to get into, Atkinson spoke glowingly of Hunter and the relationship they’ve been able to build over the last few months off the floor. Both of them are starting their first training camp together in less than a week, comfortably with a foundation and feet on the ground in Cleveland.
As for who he is as a player, starting from scratch excites everybody in the building: “De'Andre Hunter, you could argue, has been our best player in the offseason.
“Through those conversations, through building our relationship, we've talked about, ‘What is that going to look like tactically? Where are we going to get you the ball? Where do you like the ball?’ and, ‘Hey, I like this action’ That was kind of my beginning statement,” Atkinson said. We're definitely going to make some tweaks, and some of that is geared towards putting him in a better position. I think statistically he had an incredible year for us, but I know there's more in there. I’m excited to see his growth this year.”
Lonzo Ball and Larry Nance Jr. will fit right in
Veteran presences are essential for a championship-driven franchise. Atkinson believes that Altman and the front office “knocked it out of the park” with their new additions of Lonzo Ball and Larry Nance Jr.
Atkinson will lean on Ball’s basketball IQ and his stout guarding abilities. The same goes for Nance, who will undoubtedly serve as a Swiss Army knife behind Mobley and Jarrett Allen. (He’ll also help new Cavalier big man Thomas Bryant with pointers.)
“I do like [that] we add Lonzo,” Atkinson said. “Lonzo's a defensive piece, obviously losing [Isaac Okoro]. We got Lonzo, and then obviously Larry has been a really good defensive player his whole career. So that gets me really, really excited about that for our defense.”
There’s hungry, and then, there’s starving for Donovan Mitchell
Cleveland fans ought to love hearing what Altman had to say regarding Donovan Mitchell attacking this offseason: “Donovan Mitchell has been just a tremendous teammate and leader for this organization. But we're kind of trying to hold him back from himself right now. He's in mid-season form right now, and we need him peaking at the end of the season.
“He's been very intentional about how he wants to condition his body to be ready for this run. And at 29 years old, coming off the best year of his career, he's ready to make that leap. He's hungry; he's dying to make that next jump in his career. But he's doing it with actions. He's intentional.”
Altman did mention that playing Mitchell 38 minutes a night won’t be sustainable, so the team's internal growth will be paramount to preserve the star guard and ensure he’s fresh by the time the playoffs roll around. He is pleased with Atkinson and the training staff’s plan to aid in that.
Sam Merrill has earned the Cavs’ trust
With this particular salary cap era, Altman knew that bringing back each of Ty Jerome and Sam Merrill would be incredibly difficult: “You can’t keep everybody…
“Sam provides a different skill set that’s really, really hard to find. We will miss the playmaking of Ty, but I do think that we'll be able to assume that from other pieces that we have on the roster,” Altman said. “But the movement shooting, the competitiveness, the toughness of Sam, he's such a cultural piece.
“He’s drafted 60th overall, goes to the G League. We pick him up as an unsigned free agent. He hits 10 threes. And then [Cavs vice president of basketball strategy and personnel] Jon Nichols is like, we probably need to sign him to a two-way just to keep him off the streets. So we did that, and now he's grown through our system and he's a mainstay in the rotation. And so that's a success story of finding these undervalued talents and growing them and then handing them off to a head coach that believes in them. And so you have to make difficult decisions…”
