The NBA’s fashion coach is Spanish. Kenny Atkinson, 57, leads the Cleveland Cavaliers, who have gotten off to a perfect start to the season with 15 wins in 15 games, the second best mark in history. Atkinson, who was an ordinary player, embarked on the European adventure when he saw that the doors of the NBA were closed to him. He married a Spanish woman and acquired dual nationality. Now, the professional league that did not love him as a player, applauds him as a coach. This Tuesday has a test that will measure the Cavaliers’ possibilities: they visit the champions, the Boston Celtics, at TD Garden.
Atkinson toured Europe as a basketball globetrotter after finishing college and playing on a couple of American minor league teams. In his transatlantic adventure, he went through 14 teams over a decade in Spain, Italy, Germany, France and Holland. He was a willing and hard-working point guard, but not very bright. He arrived at Madrid’s Canoe in 1993 and was in Spain until 1997. In addition to Canoe, he played for Vino de Toro Zamora and Aguas de Calpe. Furthermore, Atkinson’s signing in the ACB league reflects a fleeting and not very successful passage through the highest category of Spanish basketball. He played 3:06 minutes with Baloncesto Salamanca in a match against Caja San Fernando. He lost three balls, committed two fouls and gave an assist. End of story.
The player married a Sevillian, Laura, and acquired Spanish nationality. He criticized his American teammates who went to play in Europe, but they isolated themselves and made no effort to integrate and get to know the countries they passed through. The current coach of the Cavaliers also forged ties in France. In the Olympic Games this summer he was assistant coach of Victor Wembanyama’s team, with which he won the silver medal.
France lost the final against the new dream team American, trained by Steve Kerr, who until a few months ago was Atkinson’s boss. The American-Spanish served as assistant coach of the Golden State Warriors for the past three seasons. In the first of them, the San Francisco team won the championship ring. Many believe they see traces of the Warriors’ style in the Cavaliers’ current attacking game.
The Cleveland team has the same foundation as last season, in which it finished fourth in the regular season in the Eastern Conference and only passed the first round of the playoffs. Atkinson has made those same pieces fit together better now, especially on offense. The coach has a young starting quintet, with an average of less than 25 years old. The star of the team is Donovan Mitchell, 28, who came to Cleveland two seasons ago from the Utah Jazz. The Spider Mitchell’s main ally is Darius Garland, who at 24 years old has acquired extraordinary maturity. Evan Mobley, 23, third in the draftof 2021, with 2.11 meters, and center Jarrett Allen, 26 years old and 2.06 meters tall, provide the centimeters. Short forward Isaac Okoro, 23, brings defensive discipline.
Caris LeVert, Dean Wade and Ty Jerome are also adding minutes and points. Atkinson has taken advantage of the absences of some of the starters to give opportunities to the bench players, who have responded in a big way. The Cavs are the highest scoring team in the league, but it is a collective effort. Mitchell, the team’s leading scorer with an average of 24.6 points per game, is only 16th in the NBA. Without him, the Cavs were able to score 128 points on Sunday, with four players scoring more than 20 points each. And without Mobley, the team’s third-leading scorer, they scored 148 points on Friday. They have surpassed 130 on the scoreboard in six games this season, a record they did not even touch during LeBron James’ time in Cleveland, when the Cavaliers won their only championship title.
No coach in NBA history has had a debut as brilliant as Atkinson’s with the Cavaliers. The new coach has accelerated the attacking game, applying some of the lessons learned alongside Kerr. At times, their ball circulation, with great speed and mobility that allows good shot selection and high success percentages, is reminiscent of that of the Warriors.
The two met this month and the Cavaliers crushed their rivals with a dizzying first half in which they took an 83-42 lead. “I think they beat us with what we have beaten teams for years,” Draymond Green, one of the Warriors’ pillars of the last decade, said at the end of the game. “The movement of the ball, the players flying from one side to the other, the intentionality with the extra pass. Dribbling, passing, turning is what we have preached for years, and they have beaten us with it,” he added. “Clearly, they’re one of the best teams in the league,” Kerr conceded.
Atkinson’s main merit is that with his adjustments in attack he has generated a virtuous circle of confidence in which each player feels important. The coach admits that it will be difficult to maintain the level of success at current levels, but the players show a complicity that is not easy to achieve. This Tuesday’s game against the Celtics will test whether the Cavaliers can compete head-to-head against the best in the decisive games. Those from Boston are risking their survival in the NBA Cup. “The game comes at the perfect time,” Atkinson said Sunday.
This is Atkinson’s second stint at the helm of an NBA team. In the Brooklyn Nets, which is now coached by also Spaniard Jordi Fernández, he led the team between 2016 and 2020, but his results were rather poor. Now, he is enjoying his great moment, the one he had been fighting for, first as a player and then as a coach, since he was a university student in Richmond and which has eluded him so many times.
