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Tim Bontemps, ESPN
BOSTON — After Cleveland saw its season end in a 113-98 loss to the Boston Celtics in Game 5 of the Eastern Conference semifinals Wednesday night, Cavaliers coach J.B. Bickerstaff said he wants to continue being the team’s head coach.
“Yeah,” Bickerstaff said when asked that during his postgame news conference. “We have continued to build this thing the right way. Every single year we’ve improved, continued to get better, play-in, playoffs, win a round … players have gotten better. Guys have had great years.
“This is definitely a place I want to be.”
When Bickerstaff was later asked if it was a place he expects to be, he laughed and said, “I mean, no one’s told me I’m not.
“So, I’ll keep showing up ’til they tell me not to.”
ESPN’s Adrian Wojnarowski, citing sources, reported Wednesday that the Cavaliers plan to take time to evaluate Bickerstaff’s future, but the organization remains fond of him. Bickerstaff has been the head coach in Cleveland for four-plus seasons, having led the franchise to back-to-back playoff berths, including winning a first-round series against the Orlando Magic in these playoffs — a feat the franchise hadn’t done at all since 2018, and hadn’t done without LeBron James on the roster since 1993.
But Bickerstaff’s future is far from the only question surrounding the Cavaliers as they head into the offseason — and arguably isn’t the biggest one. That is what the future will hold for Cavaliers star guard Donovan Mitchell, who sat out Game 5 with a left calf strain, the same injury that kept him out of Game 4.
Mitchell, who was acquired by the Cavaliers 18 months ago for a package of Lauri Markkanen, Collin Sexton and several future first-round picks, has had back-to-back All-Star seasons in Cleveland, and was spectacular in these playoffs before getting injured. He became the second Cavalier ever — along with James — to score at least 25 points in six consecutive playoff games.
Now, he has to decide whether he wants to commit to Cleveland moving forward, as he has one year left on his contract before a player option for the 2025-26 season.
Per ESPN’s Bobby Marks, Mitchell could sign a four-year, $208 million extension with the Cavaliers.
Because Mitchell didn’t play, he didn’t speak to the media Wednesday night.
When asked about the situation the Cavaliers have built around Mitchell, Bickerstaff said there’s a lot that should be attractive for someone like Mitchell as he decides what he wants to do.
“We’ve got a good team,” Bickerstaff said. “We’ve got good individual players, we have high-character players that are concerned about winning. And anytime you have that, you’re gonna give yourself an opportunity.
“I would love to see what we look like when we’re whole for an entire season, what pressure we can put on the league from that standpoint. But we’ve got a good basketball team, guys who want to win and guys who want to get better.”
Health was not only an issue in the playoffs for Cleveland, with Mitchell missing the final two games of the Cavaliers’ run and starting center Jarrett Allen missing each of the final eight with a bruised rib. During the regular season, Cleveland’s core four players — Mitchell, Allen, Darius Garland and Evan Mobley — played only 28 games together, and outscored opponents by only 2.2 points per 100 possessions in the 392 minutes they shared the court.
The fit at times between both Mitchell and Garland in the backcourt and, particularly, Mobley and Allen — two non-shooting big men — in the frontcourt was clunky. Mobley, however, had an impressive series with Allen sidelined, including a 33-point performance in Game 5 on 15-for-24 shooting, while Garland followed up a 30-point outing with Mitchell out — and James and their shared agent, Rich Paul, sitting courtside — in Game 4 by going 4-for-17, and finishing with 11 points and 9 assists in Game 5.
It was a fitting end to a season that held a lot of promise but also never quite felt like the Cavaliers all could get on the same page, with Bickerstaff and several players, including Max Strus, admitting the team battled through a lot of adversity.
Now Cleveland heads into the offseason after the team’s deepest foray into the playoffs without James in decades without clarity on what it’s future will look like, and with some very significant questions to answer about its overall direction — including the futures of its head coach and star player.
“We take a leap every year, so hopefully next year we take another leap,” Garland said. “Hopefully we’ll be in the Eastern Conference finals fully healthy and just take another leap. Definitely came a long way from when I was drafted. I went from 19 wins to being in the semifinals of the conference, so I’ll take it, just to keep getting better and better every year.”