Stephen A. Smith Slams Cavaliers for Kenny Atkinson Decision
The Cleveland Cavaliers fought their way through two first-round series in the NBA Playoffs, going the full seven games and eliminating the Orlando Magic and Detroit Pistons.
However, the Cavs ran into an absolute beast of a team in the New York Knicks in the Eastern Conference Finals, who swept them out of the postseason, and created immediate questions about Cleveland’s squad.
When a team fails, questions typically begin circulating about the head coach, and many believed Cleveland didn’t have the right guy in place with Kenny Atkinson.
Despite the 4-0 playoff loss in the ECF, the Cavaliers showed they fully believe in him, as The Athletic’s Joe Vardon reported (via sources) that the Cavs will keep Atkinson as head coach for the foreseeable future.
That drew strong criticism from ESPN’s Stephen A. Smith, who recently sounded off about the Cavs’ decision to keep Atkinson, rather than finding someone else for the job.
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“I think this was a disastrous move on the Cleveland Cavaliers’ part,” Smith said, first calling out the team for making the announcement so soon after the Knicks swept them, rather than at least making it seem they gave it some thought.
Smith suggested that Atkinson isn’t a bad coach. He coached the Cavs to 64 wins last season and 52 this season, which are very respectable.
However, Smith brought up how he was talking “nonsense about analytics” after a loss, and how the Knicks went on an 18-0 run in a game, yet Atkinson didn’t call a single timeout. He said Atkinson seemed to forget about the rules with timeouts.
“When you sit up there, and you’re talking, and you just seem to be clueless, and you appear to be distant, and you don’t seem to have the pulse of your team, that’s egregious,” Smith said on ESPN’s “First Take.”
He called his comment about having won games against the Knicks based on analytics, “damn ignorant” on Atkinson’s part, suggesting he must not have been afraid of his bosses when he said it.
Smith brought up the example of the legendary Pat Riley, who stepped in as head coach of the Miami Heat in 2006 after firing Stan Van Gundy. He contended that Riley knew something was “psychologically wrong” with the team and he needed to fix it as head coach.
According to Smith, that is the case with this Cavaliers team under Atkinson, and the organization should know better than to keep him as the answer to any psychological issues the team might have.
Atkinson has mostly held assistant coaching jobs throughout his career, except for coaching the Brooklyn Nets from 2016 to 2020. They had one winning season and got eliminated from the first round of the playoffs.
The same happened to him as head coach of Cleveland last postseason, while this postseason, he had a bit more success, possibly due to other teams’ eliminations from the bracket.
The team will also have major roster considerations beyond their coach this offseason, but for now, they seem content sticking with Atkinson to guide whatever the roster presents next season.
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This story was originally published May 27, 2026 at 9:26 AM.