John Beilein out in Cleveland

John Beilein is out of work for the remainder of the season as the veteran coach and the Cleveland Cavaliers have negotiated a settlement of his five-year contract that was signed only nine months ago.

The Cavaliers posted a crummy 14-40 record, which has placed Cleveland in last place in the Eastern Conference and above only Golden State in the league standings.
The 67-year-old Beilein entered the league with a reputation as a teacher and as an offensive innovator, yet never was able to settle into either role in his first job in professional basketball.
Beilein struggled in connecting with his younger players and surprisingly his veterans as well with a memorable mid-game blowup on one occasion with Tristan Thompson and having to apologize for misspeaking and calling his players "thugs" in a team meeting, where Beilein is said to have meant to say "slugs" instead.

Beilein started quickly with the Cavaliers winning four of his first nine games and playing with a hustling style that gave fans hope for the future, but the ball quickly rolled downhill from there as Beilein not only struggled with the players off the court with the more relaxed way of dealing with professionals rather than college players but on the court as well.
Beilein appeared to be bothered by the losses, which was surprising for a coach with a five-year contract with an organization that has no delusions about being anything other than involved in a rebuilding process and instead of continuing to play to his strengths as a coach that has used various strategies to attack offensively, Beilein drew into a shell and ran a more traditional NBA offense.
Running a system that wasn't different from the rest of the league played right into the hands of failure as Beilein's inexperience in professional basketball continued to put him behind the curve.

Beilein was also struggling with the career path of his son Patrick, who had been hired as the head coach at Niagara but never coached a game before being resigning for personal reasons and at 67, Beilein likely knew that he was wasting his final few years of coaching in a job that he was ill-suited for and made the decision to step away to not waste even more time.
Beilein will immediately become the most sought-after coach in college basketball in the next few weeks as schools replace disappointing coaches in the 'silly season' for college basketball and with Beilein's background (two NCAA Finals appearances and two more Elite Eight teams), Beilein will likely have himself back on the sidelines with a major conference program next season, should he choose to do so.

As for the Cavaliers, it's J.B. Bickerstaff in as the head coach for at least the rest of the season with a chance to keep the job, should he impress the front office.
The 40-year-old Bickerstaff, the son of long-time NBA coach and executive Bernie Bickerstaff, has coached parts of three seasons with Houston, where he finished 37-34 and led the Rockets to the playoffs in 2015-16 after replacing Kevin McHale, and Memphis, where he finished the 2017-18 season as an interim head coach before being hired for the full-time job for 2018-19 with the Grizzlies.
Memphis fired Bickerstaff after last season after a 33-49 record with another rebuilding team, which made him available to come to Cleveland as the top assistant to Beilein as he learned the league and to help his adjustment to the NBA.

Bickerstaff's main job will be to continue to try to develop his young players such as Collin Sexton, Darius Garland, and Kevin Porter Jr, integrate newly added Andre Drummond into the offense and organization and hopefully keep Kevin Love productive as a part of the team or raise his potential trade value.
In other words, do the best you can and hope for the best, which isn't about wins and losses for the remainder of this season.

Bickerstaff will be the fourth head coach for Cleveland in the less than two seasons since LeBron James left for Los Angeles and he has a mess to clean up with an overpaid veteran (Kevin Love) with a contract difficult to unload, a talented big man in a game that is moving away from dominant big men (Andre Drummond), and players that the team drafted/traded with hope to build around them, but their ceiling could be only to eventually be good players, but not franchise foundational types (Collin Sexton, Darius Garland, Kevin Porter Jr, Cedi Osman, and Larry Nance Jr). and a front office with Koby Altman that could be a better fit for whatever the Browns are doing this year and the consistently inconsistent commitment of Dan Gilbert to whatever plan seems to be a good idea for a few months,  Bickerstaff has his work cut out for him without a doubt.