CLEVELAND — The Cavaliers plan to retain coach Kenny Atkinson even after the team was swept Monday night by the New York Knicks, two league sources told The Athletic.
Atkinson guided the franchise to its first appearance in the conference finals since 2018 and first without LeBron James on the roster since 1992, but there was some question coming out of the series about potential changes Cleveland might make. Instead, no major changes to the front office or coaching staffs are now expected, per those sources.
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Atkinson, 59, has coached the Cavs for two seasons and has three seasons remaining on his contract. He won 116 regular-season games and was NBA Coach of the Year in 2025, but the team is 13-14 in the playoffs under him, and several of his decisions at crucial moments this postseason came into question.
Cleveland needed two Game 7 victories to reach the conference finals. After getting by a depleted Toronto Raptors roster in the first round, the Cavaliers had a chance to close the series out against the top-seeded Detroit Pistons in six games, but were crushed at home before taking Game 7 in Detroit. They were swept in the conference finals by the New York Knicks, but the series began with Cleveland building a 22-point lead in the fourth quarter of Game 1, only to blow it while Atkinson held onto timeouts and left top defensive player Dean Wade on the bench when the objective was to protect a lead.
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Asked about his job security Monday night, Atkinson said, “Listen, I have confidence, confidence in myself first of all, confidence in the group.”
He added: “From a player and coaches perspective, being with that group in there, I’m pretty darn proud of what we did.”
Last season, Cleveland won 64 games and finished first in the East while Atkinson won Coach of the Year, but was bounced in five games in the second round by the Indiana Pacers.
Atkinson took the 2025 playoff failure hard and rewatched every possession from the series against Indiana, looking for what went wrong. He was hard on his staff, numerous league sources said, in part because he felt he couldn’t be overly hard on the players. But at the same time, with Darius Garland and Max Strus out to start the regular season, Atkinson tried to lean on Evan Mobley to be more of an offensive threat. Both he and the team struggled with that priority.
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After languishing around .500 through December, the Cavaliers began to improve in January. On Feb. 3, the Cavs orchestrated one of the biggest trades of the season, moving Garland for James Harden. Atkinson played a role in convincing Harden to accept a trade to Cleveland by the Clippers, and over Harden’s arrival, the Cavs’ front office and Atkinson had a momentary mending of fences.
“Ultimate player’s coach, he gets it, he understands his team,” Harden said of Atkinson after the game Monday.
The Cavs had the most expensive roster in NBA history this season, totaling $229 million before taxes, and will have decisions to make regarding role players like Wade, who will be a free agent, and stars like Harden and Donovan Mitchell — who can, in Harden’s case, be re-signed to a new deal, or in Mitchell’s, receive a massive contract extension.