Stephen A. Smith spent the morning after Game 1 of the Eastern Conference Finals reserving the bulk of his fury not for James Harden or Donovan Mitchell but for the man on the Cleveland Cavaliers sideline. With the Knicks erasing a 22-point deficit inside the final 7:40 of regulation, Smith argued that the difference between a competitive series and one that is already over is, in part, the work of head coach Kenny Atkinson.
Smith opened the takedown by zeroing in on Atkinson's post-game defence of Harden, who finished 1-for-7 over the fourth quarter and overtime while Jalen Brunson repeatedly hunted him in isolation. "The egregious part of the evening was with coach Kenny Atkinson for a bevy of errors he made not utilizing timeouts," Smith said. "Sitting up there with that ridiculous, utterly ridiculous soundbite talking about he trusted James Harden. Damn. Watch the game. See the flow of the game. Recognize your boy is getting completely abused. Call a timeout. Change schemes defensively. Do something to show him, to help him out."
Smith argued that Harden absorbed two layers of damage. "Not only was he abused and assaulted by Jaylen Brunson, but he was also neglected by his coach, who showed no sympathy whatsoever and left him on an island to handle his own business, which he was clearly incapable of handling," Smith said. "I don't know if James Harden is going to recover from this."
The First Take host borrowed a phrase from co-panellist Jay Williams to crystallise his verdict. "Jay Will said this morning on Get Up, it's like coaching malpractice," Smith said. "And that's I'm attributing him because that's the phrase. It was so bad to not use the timeouts, to not design, you're going to let the Knicks dictate all the action and just say, 'We're going to confront James Harden.'"
The timeout sequence stunned Smith. The Cavaliers had two timeouts available with 8:19 to play in the fourth quarter and a sizeable lead. Atkinson held both. "It was so bad to not use the timeouts," Smith said. He then pointed at the underlying flaw in Atkinson's reasoning: holding timeouts for game-ending appeals rather than for stopping a run that ultimately swung the game by 23 points. "He didn't call timeout. The Knicks players were sort of slow getting back at first because they thought he's going to call timeout now. He didn't. And they're like, 'Okay, well, we'll keep we'll roll with this.'"
Smith was equally pointed about the soundbite Atkinson offered when asked about the choice. "I like to hold my timeouts," Atkinson said in the post-game presser. "I could, you know, I didn't want to have one timeout at the end of the game. One or two-point game. I try to hold him, you know." Smith's response was withering. "Can't hold them," he said. "First of all, you can't even — two of them. Two of them evaporate. Well, he wants to have one in case he needs an appeal."
The defence comment drew the same treatment. "James Harden, you trust him as a defender. When has James Harden ever been trusted at a — when has that ever been said about James Harden in his career?" Smith said. "I'm not here to denigrate him as a defender. I'm simply saying — when has anybody ever associated good defense with James Harden? Tell me that one time. It's never happened."
Smith took the comparison further by invoking Jamahl Mosley, the former Orlando Magic head coach who was fired after blowing a 24-point Game 6 lead earlier in the playoffs. "This is why I had no problem with Mosley getting fired out of Orlando. He blew a 24-point lead in game six. He did nothing in the game that changed the momentum of the game," Smith said. "Kenny, who's not going to get fired, but Kenny in this situation had seven minutes and 45 seconds to do something."
He closed the segment by stripping Atkinson of the deference his Cleveland turnaround had earned him. "I don't know if we'll ever look at Kenny Atkinson the same after the mistakes that he made last night," Smith said. "The star definitely dims from the cache you once had." With three more potential games against a New York team that just spent a half running its offense through Harden's defensive shoulder, Atkinson now has very little time to repair it.
