Altman says firing Bickerstaff was about “finding someone with a new approach”

Altman talked to the media on Friday for the first time

According to Cleveland Cavaliers president of basketball operations Koby Altman, the decision to fire J.B. Bickerstaff was about “finding someone with a new approach” and not about anyone one thing Bickerstaff did.

“Tremendously difficult decision. Not going to go into sort of any shortcomings or negatives about J.B. It’s not something that he did specifically,” Altman said. “I think for us, it’s with this group, finding someone with a new approach, someone with a different voice, a fresh set of eyes to help us move forward. We’ve accomplished a lot in the last few years, getting to a conference semifinals and we don’t want to be complacent.

“We don’t want to be content with that. So, what are the levers that we can push and pull to get to that next level? We feel we’re not far off. We feel we have a tremendous amount of talent in house. We have players that believe in each other, believe in this organization and think they’re pretty close. It’s not one singular thing that J.B. did wrong. How do we continue to move this thing forward because we don’t think we’re far off?”

The Cavs let Bickerstaff go on Thursday after five years in charge.

Altman also said that they don’t have a list “people and criteria” for Bickerstaff’s replacement.

“I’d be lying to you if I said I’ve already dove into a list of people and criteria. We’re going to take the weekend, decompress, come back Tuesday and really sit down with the staff and go over those questions. It’s a massive undertaking. First of all, when you had a person, a man as good as J.B. to get to the conclusion of, OK, we need to go in different directions. So that has taken up all my mind capacity along with combine and L.A. draft workouts. We’re going to take the weekend and come back and really map out what that is,” Altman said. “We haven’t had a search for five years. We’ve had real continuity here — front office, bench. We haven’t had a search in five years. That search five years ago is completely different than this one. This is a very highly specific job requirement. In terms of the questions we’re going to ask, very, very specific to the talent level, very specific to how we can achieve even more than we have and obviously some characteristics that we talk about from a cultural standpoint, but there’ll be very highly specific questions that I think I’ll have. I can answer you more next week in terms of criteria experience and starting to compile a list.”