NBA players are usually the ones who face criticism for their comments to the media, while coaches tend to be careful enough to avoid embarrassment. Cleveland Cavaliers coach Kenny Atkinson has been a notable exception, drawing mockery for roughly six months over remarks he made after Game 3 of the Eastern Conference Finals.
With Cleveland trailing the New York Knicks 3-0 in the series, Atkinson was asked how he could give his players hope, given that no team in NBA history has ever erased a 3-0 deficit. "Analytically .. we've won 2 out of 3," he said at the time, pointing to the expected scores of the games and Cleveland's poor shooting compared to projections.
As Atkinson described it, analytics can estimate what a game's score should have been based on the shots each team generated and the expected field goal percentage on those attempts. He did not specify which games he meant, but they were likely Game 1, which Cleveland lost in overtime, and Game 3, which New York won 121-113. Prime Stats had Game 3 as a 113-113 tie by its expected score metric, and while New York had an expected 10-point win in Game 1, that figure accounted for overtime. Had the actual score matched Cleveland's projections in regulation, the game would never have reached an extra period and the Cavaliers would have led the series 1-0.
Regardless of the expected scores, the Knicks held a 3-0 lead and had won those games by a combined 40 points. New York then closed out the sweep with a 130-93 win in Game 4, though the Prime Stats expected score of 125-100 was slightly less lopsided. Atkinson's quote was widely ridiculed before and after Game 4, including by Knicks players. Josh Hart joked on his podcast with Jalen Brunson that "I guess we lost analytically," and Karl-Anthony Towns said before the ESPYs that "analytically, we should win" the Best Team award. The word became shorthand for using numbers to justify an ugly loss.
On Saturday, the Cavaliers met the Knicks for the first time since that series. New York prevailed again, 109-97, and once more the expected score leaned slightly toward Cleveland, with Prime Stats posting a figure of 112-103. This time, Atkinson did not bring up the numbers after the defeat. Instead, he tried to explain the much-maligned quote, contending it had been taken out of context in a way that made the soundbite come across worse than his full answer.
"I would just say there was no coach more complimentary of the Knicks and honest about our performance and how they dominated us," Atkinson told reporters. "So you live and learn a little bit with those things. But like I said, 99% of my comments were how they dominated us. They were by far the better team. I answered the question, as it was taken, [which was] 'And you're down 3-0, what hope do you have of even giving to your guys?'"
"We get a lot of information .. and I wasn't lying in that sense, but in no sense was it like, 'Oh, man, we deserve to be winning.' Like zero, zero, thought of that."
Atkinson conceded that "no one wants to hear" about process when the result is a blown 22-point fourth-quarter lead and a 3-0 hole, but he was searching for a way to rally his team in an impossible spot. His phrasing turned into a meme, yet coaches facing a 3-0 deficit will reach for any positive sign available. Atkinson had data suggesting the teams were closer than the scoreboard showed, and using it to inspire his players made sense internally. Sharing it publicly invited exactly the ridicule that followed, as the soundbite eclipsed both the full quote and its context.
