While the Cleveland Cavaliers have championship aspirations, head coach Kenny Atkinson challenged his team on opening night of the season
The various sportsbooks out in Las Vegas will tell you the Cleveland Cavaliers are the favorites to represent the Eastern Conference in the NBA Finals. Plenty of pundits around the league feel similarly.
Head coach Kenny Atkinson, however, isn't even entertaining expectations as his Cavaliers tip-off the 2025-26 season.
"The Cavs, we have a lot to prove. 11-15 the last three years in the playoffs," Atkinson asserted. It was more of a challenge than a simple statement of fact, especially on the opening night of the season against the east's other top contender, the New York Knicks, on one of basketball's brightest stages, Madison Square Garden.
"The Knicks have gotten to the conference finals, they've done it," Atkinson said. "Some would say 'we're contenders,' to me contenders are when you go to the conference finals or the finals. Our next step is we have to get out of the second round, first, before we start talking all these expectations and stuff ... we have a lot to prove."
Cleveland's postseason shortcomings have been well documented at this point. During the 2023 playoffs, it was the Knicks who bullied their way through the wine and gold in the opening round of the playoffs. That gentlemen sweep was considered the growing pains of a young team trying to adjust to the bright lights of the postseason.
One year later in 2024, it was another five game series loss, this time in the second round, at the hands of the eventual champions, the Boston Celtics. That one was chalked up to Boston being a juggernaut.
Then this past May it was the Indiana Pacers running the Cavs off the floor in five games in the conference semifinals. After a 64-win season for Cleveland, that one was much more unexplainable.
And even though, Atkinson wasn't here for those first two postseason failures, hes not afraid to up the ante on the veterans on the team who have been through them all.
"It's one years, two years, three years of this core group and we kind of know there's another level we can get to," he said.
As the NBA season begins, Atkinson isn't ready to crown the Cavaliers anything. They have to prove it to him, to Cleveland fans, to the NBA world.