INDEPENDENCE, Ohio — The Cleveland Cavaliers' season ended after a Game 5 loss to the Boston Celtics in the Eastern Conference Semifinals, the furthest they'd been since 2018, before the rebuild. Still, the team has loftier goals, and they have already taken steps to reach them, including firing J.B. Bickerstaff from head coaching duties.
President of Basketball Koby Altman held his end-of-season press conference at Cleveland Clinic Courts Friday morning, and there were plenty of takeaways from it regarding the status of a contract extension for star guard Donovan Mitchell, injuries that plagued the team last season and, of course, the upcoming search for a new head coach.
Here's everything we learned from Altman Friday morning:
On the head coaching search:
Altman started his press conference thanking Bickerstaff for his contribution to the Cavs over the past five years. When asked what prompted the decision to part ways, Altman would not attribute it to any downside from the coach but rather on how the team sees the potential for the future.
"It's not something that he did specifically. I think for us it's with this group, finding someone with a new approach, someone with a different voice, a fresh set of eyes to help us move forward," Altman said. "We feel we're not far off. We feel we have a tremendous amount of talent in-house. We have players that believe in each other, believe in this organization and think they're pretty close. And so it's not one singular thing that J.B. did wrong. It's, 'How do we continue to move this thing forward?' because we don't think we're far off."
Altman also shared that he and his front office don't have a list of candidates just yet, but that is something they plan to work on over the weekend. The team will work through criteria and attributes that they feel will help lead the Cavs forward and begin reaching out to coaches who fit what they're looking for.
Once Altman and his staff have started the process and interviewed the candidates they feel are good fits, they'll begin to narrow down finalists. In that position, Altman said Cavs owner Dan Gilbert will then have a "big influence" on the final decision.
For the Cavs, in the search for a new head coach, they want to be very intentional with their hire. Whoever the person is taking over the role will need to have exactly what the front office feels is the missing piece to get the team over the next hump and into a championship once again, Altman said.
"We haven't had a search for five years. We've had real continuity here, front office, bench, and so we haven't had a search in five years. That search five years ago is completely different than this one. This is a very highly specific job requirement in terms of the questions we're going to ask," Altman said. "Very, very specific to the talent level. Very specific to how we can achieve even more than we have. And obviously, some characteristics that we talk about from a cultural standpoint, but there'll be very highly specific questions that I think I'll have."
On the contract extension of Donovan Mitchell:
There's not much more of an impactful decision for the future of the Cavs than that of Mitchell remaining in Cleveland long-term.
Right now, Mitchell is under contract with the Cavs through the 2026 season, but he's eligible to sign a four-year extension worth around $200 million. While the Cavs aren't able to discuss Mitchell's contract with him until July, Altman shared that they feel good about their relationship with the star guard.
"I'll say that my exit interview with him was really good in that he was talking about the future and how excited he was about the team, the organization. This is a player that has had two of the best years of his career here, has had a lot of success here, understands the infrastructure, I think has a lot of trust in what we're doing and understands that our goal is to win a championship," Altman said. "And again, when we're talking to him about the future here, getting his feedback, it's all about how do we make this thing better? How do we achieve this together? How do we win in the future? And so I take those as very positive things from his own words. He says he's happy here, he likes it here. And so he's always been very genuine. He's always been very intentional. He's been a great teammate and we have to take all that at face value and say, 'Okay, we feel good about where we are with Donovan.' Obviously, things could change in terms of his contract future, it's nothing we can talk about until July."
Mitchell will obviously be a major factor in the search for a head coach and the Cavs will want someone that will work well with their star player. That's not to say Bickerstaff did not—another point Altman made. Altman said that Mitchell did not play a role in Bickerstaff's dismissal.
On the future and development of young players:
Last season saw some struggles throughout parts of the year for some of the young core of the team, including Darius Garland and Evan Mobley.
Both Garland and Mobley drew criticisms and questions around whether they could succeed on the court at the same time as Mitchell and Jarrett Allen, respectively.
Altman said that despite some belief that they will need to trade Garland if they extend Mitchell, or move on from Allen to focus on Mobley, that's not what the team feels to be true. When asked about breaking up the pairs, Altman said "I don't see why we should."
"I think that's overblown. I'll say this. I think there's way more data that speaks to it works than doesn't in the last two years combined because they've been together for two years, there's a lot of data that we can look at. And so over the last two years, including the playoffs, there are net positive, +5 together on the floor. Everyone wants to throw out the first year together when Darius actually had one of the best years of his career, he was an All-Star, but he actually had more efficiency and that was with Donovan. They have a great relationship on and off the court," Altman said. "And the same thing goes to say the fit of the Evan Mobley, Jarrett Allen—that fit actually has a higher net rating than our guards."
Altman doesn't expect to make sweeping changes to the roster heading into next season.
What he does anticipate is placing more emphasis on continuing the development of young players like Mobley and Garland. Altman discussed how that development may have been slowed this past season, but getting back on track this summer will be a point of emphasis for Mobley himself and in the decisions the team makes.
Asked #Cavs Koby Altman how much the development of players like Evan Mobley weighs into offseason decisions.
— Camryn Justice (@camijustice) May 24, 2024
"Did we get away from unlocking his potential fully? A little bit this year. And I think that needs to be a vocal point into the summer.."
Also spoke on Darius Garland: pic.twitter.com/JkG8HNwryH
"The balance of developing a top-three pick and the talent that he has with us trying to win big is really difficult. That's difficult for a head coach. That's difficult for an organization because if we weren't trying to win big, I'm sure we could have rolled the ball out and had Evan scoring 20 points a game. But that means Evan Mobley's probably not in the Conference Semifinals either competing at the highest level," Altman said. "We feel that's a huge part of his development, just playing meaningful games as part of it. Did we get away from unlocking his potential fully? A little bit this year. And I think that needs to be a vocal point into the summer of how we can unlock him only because it's going to make our team even better and give us a chance to elevate to a higher level. It's going to unlock not just him but this organization. So that's certainly a vocal point.
"In terms of Darius, Darius knows he needs to have a major off-season. Him seeing the physicality of that series—of both series, really—is something that I think he's going to grow from. He had a tough year in terms of the injury piece, losing all that weight from the jaw injury, never regaining that. Trying to ingratiate himself to a team that was rolling as well was hard for him. And I think he knows this needs to be a big off-season for him."
On Jarrett Allen's rib injury:
Allen missed the last eight games of the playoffs with what was listed as a rib contusion. He had taken an elbow to the ribs in the first series with the Orlando Magic and struggled to return.
Altman confirmed on Friday that Allen was dealing with a "pierced rib," or a broken rib. The description is more severe than how it appeared on the injury report, but it was one that Altman described the center working hard to play through.
"To give you some insight to what Jarrett did, I mean Jarret tried to give it a go. To the last day-and-a-half he was trying to go up and down on this floor and do some real basketball moves. It's hard to play basketball if you can't raise your arms over your head. I know there was speculation of more stuff he could have done. It's impossible to play through what he was playing through," Altman said.
With Altman's press conference, the end of the Cavs season has been officially ushered in. They'll be busy all summer, however, looking to address their new head coaching needs, the future of Mitchell and everything in between. Because at the end of the day, the goal isn't just a postseason run. It's another championship banner hanging in the rafters of Rocket Mortgage FieldHouse.
