It's no secret that Indiana Pacers head coach Rick Carlisle has his hands plenty full already, facing what already feels like an insurmountable 2-0 deficit in the Eastern Conference Finals against the Boston Celtics. However, being the man in charge of the Indiana Pacers isn't the only coaching-related position that Rick Carlisle holds. As President of the NBA Coaches Association, a title that Carlisle has held for nearly two decades, it's expected that the 22-year coaching veteran will regularly weigh in on happenings around the NBA, most notably, the surprising firings of coaches that have become far too common in the league nowadays.
Yesterday, the Cleveland Cavaliers announced that they would be relieving head coach JB Bickerstaff of his duties after a four and a half year run with the team. In that time, Bickerstaff, the son of Cavaliers senior advisor Bernie Bickerstaff, accumulated a 170-159 record and coached the Cavaliers to their first postseason series win without LeBron James on the roster since 1993. And as expected, Pacers coach Rick Carlisle expressed his disappointment with the decision on Thursday night before the Pacers took the floor in Boston.
“I thought J.B. Bickerstaff did an amazing job,” Rick Carlisle said ahead of the Pacers loss, per Tom Withers of The Associated Press. “That was a complete culture makeover there. He was inventive. They started playing big 4 1/2 years ago. A lot of people were going, ‘Huh? How is this ever going to work?' They had (Lauri) Markkanen playing three. And the other two big guys. But, then they became a top 3 or 4 defensive team in the league. This past season, their injuries were constant. And they were constantly adjusting. … So I have great respect for him.”
In comparison to instances from the past, this is actually a rather tame response from Carlisle. In 2016, when the Cleveland Cavaliers fired David Blatt in the middle of the season — a season in which the Cavs would go on to win the NBA Title — Carlisle lambasted the Cavaliers, saying he was “embarrassed for our league that something like this could happen,” according to Brad Townsend of the Dallas News. Carlisle offered a similar response in 2021 after the Hawks moved on from Lloyd Pierce, a decision that he called “insane,” according to Doyle Rader of Forbes.
What's next for Cleveland?
Cleveland Cavaliers general manager Koby Altman echoed everything that Pacers head coach Rick Carlisle had to say about JB Bickerstaff, saying the following in the aftermath of Bickerstaff's firing:
“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.”
Much like the Indiana Pacers, the Cavs are a young team that had the look of a franchise that was heading in the right direction. Cleveland had shown continual improvement during Bickerstaff's tenure, going from missing the postseason during his first full season as the head coach, to falling short in the Play-In in 2022, to exiting in the 1st round in 2023, to making the conference semifinals this year before running into the juggernaut that is the Boston Celtics, who have now made the Eastern Conference Finals in six of the last eight seasons.
One of the assumptions around the league is that the firing of JB Bickerstaff could be a move made to appeal to Donovan Mitchell, who many expect could try to force his way out of Cleveland, even with two years remaining on his current contract. Shams Charania, Joe Vardon and Jason Lloyd of The Athletic reported that Mitchell, “among other players, did not have great confidence in Bickerstaff as the coach for the future.”
So who would Donovan Mitchell have confidence in? And will he even be in Cleveland long enough to see what the future looks like under whoever Koby Altman and the Cavaliers hire as their next head coach? Those are just two of the many questions that the Cavaliers face this offseason.
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