Cleveland Cavs head coach Kenny Atkinson should be firmly on the hot seat after his team blew a 22-point lead in Game 1.
The Cleveland Cavs fell behind 0-1 in their Eastern Conference Finals series against the New York Knicks on Tuesday evening in Madison Square Garden. Despite leading by 22 points in the fourth quarter, the Cavs completed one of the biggest choke jobs in NBA playoff history, ultimately falling in overtime by a score of 115-104.
In the aftermath of the loss, much of the blame was directed at Cavs head coach Kenny Atkinson, who waited for far too long to call a timeout when the Knicks were making their run in the fourth quarter. Atkinson also received criticism for keeping James Harden in the game despite the fact that Jalen Brunson of the Knicks was consistently torching him in the fourth quarter on switches, which helped spur the New York run. Harden wasn’t providing nearly enough on offense at that point of the game in order to justify leaving him in.
While the Cavs ultimately did end up switching their strategy and double-teaming Brunson, the Knicks did a solid job of executing and finding open shooters, with Mikal Bridges burying two triples, and Landry Shamet another, in the final couple of minutes of regulation in order to send the game into overtime, where New York took control from the very beginning.
