Stephen A. Smith believes the Cleveland Cavaliers made a disastrous decision by backing Kenny Atkinson so quickly after their New York Knicks defeat.
The issue was not just the loss itself. It was the way Cleveland were swept aside by New York and then appeared to move forward without much public reflection on what had gone wrong.
That is why Smith's criticism resonated. He was not calling Atkinson a bad coach, but he did question whether the Cavaliers had a true sense of the mood inside their own locker room.
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In a recent First Take clip , Smith ripped the Cavaliers for how quickly they seemed to settle on Atkinson after the playoff exit.
"I think this was a disastrous move on the Cleveland Cavaliers' part. … 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.
Smith's point was not about Atkinson's credentials. Cleveland won 64 games last season and 52 this season under him, which is a strong regular-season body of work.
But the timing bothered Smith. After a sweep by the Knicks, he believed the Cavaliers should have at least shown they had taken a hard look at what went wrong before deciding Atkinson was still the answer.
Smith referenced Pat Riley's famous move in 2005-06, when Riley stepped in as Miami Heat head coach after sensing the team needed a stronger leadership jolt.
Riley saw something was wrong psychologically and believed he had to take direct control. Smith's argument was that Cleveland needed to ask whether its own problems went deeper than tactics.
That is where the Cavaliers' decision looked weak to him. The Knicks series raised questions about whether Cleveland had the right voice to steady the roster when pressure rose.
Atkinson's regular-season record deserves respect, but Smith believes the Cavaliers needed to ask a harder question after the sweep.
If the locker room had a deeper issue, quickly doubling down on the same voice looked less like stability and more like denial.
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