CLEVELAND, Ohio — There’s a difference between a team tuning out its coach and a team struggling to play above its own limitations. Right now, the Cavs (21-18) are being asked to confront which one applies to them — and whether the answer is as simple as fans want it to be.
“Was last year just a honeymoon with Kenny Atkinson, and has he now lost the team? Look at the players on the court. They look uninterested. No fire until the fourth quarter,” Jeff from Washington said in a message through Subtext.
The question didn’t come out of nowhere. Cleveland’s season has been defined by uneven effort, slow starts and stretches where urgency feels optional rather than instinctual — patterns that naturally push fans to search for a singular explanation.
As the frustration grows, the conversation has shifted from effort to context and how much grace the Cavs can reasonably extend as the season matures.
“You talk about whether or not Kenny Atkinson has made the right rotations, lineups, all these things, but it always comes back to the conversation about injuries,” Ethan Sands, host of the Wine and Gold Talk podcast, said. “And now we’re getting to the point where the Cavs are going to play in their 40th game of the season on Saturday. Sure, there’s still a lot of time left in the season. A lot of time for this Cavs team to come back. But there’s still questions about whether or not Kenny Atkinson is doing exactly what is necessary.”
But for cleveland.com Cavs beat writer Chris Fedor, the issue isn’t a disconnect between Atkinson and the locker room. It’s something harder to fix — and harder to accept.
“I don’t get the sense that there is a lack of belief from the guys in the locker room when it comes to Kenny and when it comes to the decisions that he makes and the style of play that he has implemented,” Fedor said, drawing a clear contrast with the visible tension that marked the final stretch of J.B. Bickerstaff’s tenure.
That distinction matters. Because if the message hasn’t gone stale, then the problem isn’t cultural. It’s structural.
“I think they’re still doing the things that Kenny is asking of them,” Fedor explained. “I think it has been though an eye opener in the first half of the season of ‘Oh man, we’re not as talented as maybe we thought we were coming into this season.’”
That admission reframes the entire conversation. It shifts the focus away from buy-in and toward ceilings — not just for individual players, but for the roster as a whole.
“Dean Wade is on an expiring contract, a player that the Cavs now feel like they need,” Sands said. “De’Andre Hunter, probably the most physical dude that the Cavs have had on a nightly basis ... having that mindset and mentality that we’ve talked about the Cavs needing physicality wise when it came to the playoffs. Max Strus, probably the most mentally tough Cavalier.
“Three players that the Cavs feel like they might need in some capacity ... injury-prone. There’s just so many layers to this small forward problem that the Cavs have not found an answer to.”
And once the conversation shifts to roster limitations, the implications become unavoidable.
If two respected coaches, with different voices and philosophies, are running into similar walls with largely the same core, then the organization eventually has to widen the lens.
“Look what [Bickerstaff’s] doing in Detroit. He’s in the conversation once again for Coach of the Year,” Fedor said. “Last year, Kenny Atkinson was Coach of the Year, and he earned that. He deserved that. At some point, people are going to have to start looking at the players.
“If you decided that J.B. wasn’t the right guy with this group of players and he’s gone on to have a bunch of success so far in Detroit and you brought in Kenny and he was good enough to win Coach of the Year and now you’re having similar questions. Maybe start looking at the players. Maybe start looking at the roster. Maybe start looking at the Core Four.”
That line of thinking, however, doesn’t exist in a vacuum — especially when the players themselves continue to publicly back their coach.
Sands pointed to Donovan Mitchell’s recent comments ahead of the first game of the new year against the Denver Nuggets as an example of how the internal view can differ from the external noise.
“I’m thankful to Kenny for not being afraid to call us out,” Mitchell said. “That’s why we love him. That’s why we respect him.”
The endorsement complicates an already layered situation. Accountability doesn’t appear to be missing. Trust doesn’t seem broken. And yet, the results remain uneven.
“Stars do it every night,” Sands said, referencing Darius Garland and Evan Mobley’s inconsistent play. “Stars are reliable when the lights shine. The brightest stars can do it when their other star is not capable. And that’s part of what we’ve talked about on recent podcasts about Donovan Mitchell’s minutes. His usage being fatigued in the fourth quarter of a regular season game is because he’s shouldering too much of the load too early.”
Which leaves the Cavaliers in an uncomfortable in-between. Not clearly fractured. Not clearly whole. Caught between expectations built over multiple seasons and a reality that keeps exposing the same pressure points.
With the trade deadline approaching and Cleveland hovering in play-in territory despite far greater ambitions, the questions surrounding this roster — and how much it can realistically grow — are only getting louder.
Want more insider analysis on the Cavaliers’ struggles and whether a major roster shakeup could be coming? Listen to the full episode of the Wine and Gold Talk podcast for Chris Fedor and Ethan Sands’ complete breakdown of what’s really happening inside the Cavs organization.
Here’s the podcast for this week: