Kenny Atkinson to remain Cavs head coach after sweep in Eastern Conference Finals

Kenny Atkinson will remain the Cavaliers' head coach next season, marking it his third in Cleveland, ESPN's Shams Charania reported Tuesday afternoon.

The Cavs' season came to an end on Monday night after a heartbreaking 130-93 blowout loss to the Knicks in Game 4, a series which New York swept.

However, Atkinson's success with the team outweighed the brutal losses in Cleveland’s first Eastern Conference Finals appearance since 2018.

Atkinson was hired by the Cavs in June of 2024 after the team fired then-head coach J.B. Bickerstaff. The Cavs were looking for more success in the playoffs after being eliminated in the first round of the 2023 NBA Playoffs by the Knicks and then by the Boston Celtics in the second round of the 2024 NBA Playoffs.

In the first season under Atkinson, the Cavs finished the regular season with a 64-18 record, a 16-game improvement from the previous season and the team’s second-best record in franchise history.

The regular-season success helped earn Atkinson the NBA Coach of the Year award. But despite the impressive regular season, the Cavs once again found themselves eliminated in the second round, losing to the Indiana Pacers in five games.

Following their playoff exit, the team made it clear their goal for the next season would be to get over the second-round hump and make it to the Eastern Conference Finals at the very least, the ultimate goal being to win a championship for the first and only other time since 2016.

The organization remained confident in the “Core Four” roster that Atkinson was leading, centered around Donovan Mitchell, Darius Garland, Evan Mobley and Jarrett Allen, bringing the team back for the 2025-26 campaign. However, this season saw the Cavs struggle with numerous injuries, many of which fueled their struggles.

After starting the season 30-21, the Cavs made a move at the trade deadline with their sights set on that deeper playoff run, sending De’Andre Hutner to the Sacramento Kings for Keon Ellis and Dennis Schröder and then making a blockbuster deal to send Garland to the Los Angeles Clippers in exchange for James Harden.

RELATED: Cavs trade guard Darius Garland to Clippers, receiving guard James Harden

The moves were intended to give the team a lift as they eyed the postseason, and it seemed, initially, that they were doing just that, as the team went 22-9 for the remainder of the regular season.

Atkinson was tasked with getting Harden, Schröder, and Ellis acclimated to their new team with just two months before the playoffs. He also had to work swingman Max Strus back into the mix after his return from an offseason foot injury that kept him sidelined until March, and navigate lineups that regularly saw players out due to injury management, including Mitchell and Mobley.

Still, the Cavs entered the playoffs healthy, facing the Toronto Raptors in the first round with home court advantage, and began their test of playoff success. Cleveland won the first two games of the series at home but dropped the next two on the road.

After winning Game 5 at home, the Cavs had a chance to close out the series in Game 6 on the road, yet even after forcing overtime, they allowed a stunner of a 3-pointer from RJ Barrett to force Cleveland to a Game 7.

The Cavs would win that, but the series began to take a toll on the team’s stamina, only made worse in the second-round series against the gritty No. 1-seeded Detroit Pistons, led by none other than their former coach, Bickerstaff.

Cleveland started the series on the road, and the streak of losing away continued until Game 5, with the series tied up at two apiece.

After stealing Game 5 on the road, the Atkinson-led Cavs had a chance to close out the series in Game 6 in Cleveland, but after a third-quarter collapse (which was not uncommon for the Cavs), the Pistons won 115-94 and forced the Cavs to another Game 7.

The Cavs got a dominant win in Detroit in Game 7, a 125-94 victory that advanced Cleveland to where they had aimed all year: their first Eastern Conference Finals appearance in eight years, and the first without LeBron James in 34 years.

Facing the New York Knicks in the Eastern Conference Finals, Game 1 began a spiral the Cavs and Atkinson couldn’t recover from. Holding a 22-point lead with less than eight minutes left in the fourth quarter, the Cavs saw all of the issues they had battled through in the first two rounds on full display.

Turnovers (the Cavs ended the 2026 playoffs with a staggering 301 turnovers) plagued Cleveland down the stretch of Game 1, as did poor shooting. The Knicks rallied back from that 22-point deficit, all while Atkinson held four timeouts, none of which he used.

"Yeah, I like to hold my timeouts. I didn't want to have one time out at the end of the game, one or two-point game. I tried to hold them,” Atkinson said.

The game went to overtime, and the Cavs lost 115-104.

It was the kind of loss that lingers, and that remained evident as Cleveland lost the next three games and was eliminated from the playoffs while the Knicks advanced to the 2026 NBA Finals for the first time since 1999.

Atkinson lamented what went wrong for the team in this year’s playoffs after the Game 4 loss.

"I'll tell you what didn't help was losing those two game sixes. Having been in this kind of a long time and seeing this before, I think you have to take advantage of those opportunities. And the way the scheduling's set up in the league, and that's a whole other topic I could go off on. You get on a hectic schedule. And that's not to say, ‘Oh, we win those games, we beat the Knicks.’ I'm not saying that, but I think it gives us a better chance. But I think the density of the frequency of the games that never had two days rest, you know the whole deal, played a part in it. Definitely, I'm not going to say that's the reason we lost, but we would have had a better chance. I think we win, we take care of business in those game sixes. I think that's, if I have one regret, you know, two regrets, I guess you'd say,” Atkinson said.

He also expressed confidence in the team when asked if they had what it takes, as is, to have more playoff success. Atkinson praised the group for its efforts and acknowledged the leap they took to get to their initial goal of the conference finals.

"Ownership and front office gifted us with a wonderful roster, talented roster. So I feel bad for the group because you want to fulfill your expectations. So, that's disappointing. I'll turn it positive, though. We took a step. We took a step. This is kind of how this works. You have to keep climbing. We are going in, obviously, a positive direction, fell short. There's no bigger motivator, right, to get to the next level,” Atkinson said following Game 4. “Think of this offseason and development, the sacrifice we're going to need to make to get to the next level. But I'm proud of this group in terms of how they fought through adversity. Won two game sevens. We took a step, I think we took a step mentally from a mental toughness point of view, so I'm going to kind of lean on that. And again, we all know there are another two steps, really, you’ve got to take. That's the ultimate goal.”

Mitchell was asked about the criticisms Atkinson was facing, and the All-Star guard had nothing but support for his coach.

"It's just hilarious. We've done something that we haven't done since 2018, and we're still going — there's going to be criticism everywhere on Kenny, right? But why? We got here…we did it with Kenny. We didn't just go out there and coach ourselves,” Mitchell said. “I love Kenny. We love Kenny. We ride with Kenny, and ultimately that's all that matters, right? I know for a fact he's from Long Island; he don't give a damn. But it's just the world we live in. We could have made it to the Finals and got swept, somebody was going to say something … ultimately we're in the thick of it, we're in it together, and that's my biggest thing …. We're in this together.”

Atkinson is heading into next season as the Cavs' head coach with a 116-48 regular season record and a 13-14 playoff record.