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Warriors are not surprised by Kenny Atkinson’s strong start at Cavs: ‘He’s a maniac in a good way’
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Warriors are not surprised by Kenny Atkinson’s strong start at Cavs: ‘He’s a maniac in a good way’

The Cleveland Cavaliers have the same rotation players as last year, but they are a completely different team. New head coach Kenny Atkinson has made the difference so far. He has revolutionized the way they play on both ends of the floor. That doesn’t surprise anyone at the Golden State Warriors, the team where he served as an assistant coach for the past three years.

“They’ve had a really good start to their season and I’m sure Kenny has a lot to do with that,” Moses Moody said. “He is one of those competitors who will consume every ounce of time he has perfecting his craft.”

That competitiveness came across in several ways. His willingness to do his best to be great is one of them.

“He would come over in the summer when he didn’t have to crunch the numbers,” Moody said. “Sometimes I’d come back and shoot at night and I’d look up in the coaches section and I’d see Kenny’s light on. He always tried to find the edge.”

“He’s a tireless worker,” Steve Kerr said. “He loves it. Every time I call him, he’s looking at League Pass. He is a maniac in a good way.”

That competitiveness would also be reflected in the way he held people accountable.

“He’s got that fire,” Jonathan Kuminga said. ‘He’s real. If he sees some bulls***, he’ll come and tell you.’

That fire only works if his players feel like he trusts and supports them. It seemed like they did. For Andrew Wiggins, it showed in the way Atkinson told him to continue to trust his outside shot.

“When you have a coach who tells you to ‘let it fly,’ you know he has confidence in you,” Wiggins said. ‘They believe in you. As a player, that can take you a long way.”

Kuminga reiterated that point.

“It helps a lot when someone gives you that confidence, because you’re not perfect,” Kuminga said. “So just the fact that people are talking to you means a lot.”

Atkinson called Kerr a mentor before Friday’s win over his former team. He had nothing but praise for the way his staff helped him grow. That feeling went both ways. Kerr mentioned many ways he has made them better as a coaching staff, including how Atkinson helped integrate analytics into their approach.

“I learned a lot about analytics,” says Kerr. “I was always struck by the way he looked at analytics and the marriage of analytics and film and our performance. He helped combine our analytics department with our coaching staff and helped me understand what to look at.”

Atkinson also borrowed concepts from Kerr that can be seen in the way the Cavs’ offense functions.

“Just the movement of the ball, the guys flying around,” Draymond Green said of the similarities. “They are so consciously working on the extra step and this is a basic condition for us to encourage swing, swing. That is what we have been preaching for years and they have cut us to pieces with it.”

Atkinson’s knowledge of the game and his work ethic are important. But it only comes about because of his skills as a communicator.

“He really understands how to communicate and build trust in a locker room and how to make adjustments on the fly that are important throughout a season,” Steph Curry said. “You can just trust them to do the work, to watch film, live it and breathe it every day. And there is a caring factor that you feel and that buy-in is easy to follow afterwards.”

The Cavs are 10-0 and have looked impressive along the way. How good they are and can become remains to be seen, but the results couldn’t be better so far. There’s no arguing about that.

“They beat us by 40 in the half,” Curry said. “You’re as good as your record says, so they’re damn good right now.”