It’s nonetheless New York or nowhere for Cavs coach Kenny Atkinson.
He could also be a short lived enemy of the Empire State throughout the Jap Convention finals, however Madison Sq. Backyard will at all times be a particular place to the native of Northport, Lengthy Island.
“I’m a New Yorker,” Atkinson mentioned after the Cavaliers trounced the Pistons 125-94 in Sport 7 to win the second-round sequence.
“Going again to the Backyard, labored for the Knicks — know all people there. My entire household’s there principally. That’s particular.”
In spite of everything, the 2025 Coach of the 12 months’s native roots and nice relationship with former Knicks assistant coach Phil Weber gave Atkinson an unforgettable spot in staff lore greater than a decade in the past.
“Phil Weber really lived actually across the nook from us,” Michael Atkinson, Kenny’s oldest of seven extremely athletic brothers, instructed The Publish.
“Phil knew Kenny. Phil’s a brilliant personable man.”
Atkinson performed for greater than a decade abroad as a degree guard — he first dropped jaws at St. Anthony’s Excessive College and later with the 1988 Richmond Spiders, who reached the Candy 16 — and broke into the NBA as Rockets director of participant growth in 2007.
Michael mentioned his brother’s work within the Lone Star State shortly impressed Weber, who knew it was time to get Atkinson again house.
“He ended up recommending Kenny to Mike D’Antoni, and Mike D’Antoni employed Kenny with the Knicks,” mentioned Michael, a former Sachem hoops coach who Rick Pitino pulled to Kentucky.
Atkinson spent 4 years at MSG, from 2008 to 2012, the place “he had the fellows in direction of the top of the roster” to take care of, his large bro mentioned.
“A type of guys occurred to be Jeremy Lin, and so Kenny labored with Jeremy Lin each day,” Michael added.
“Jeremy Lin even provides Kenny numerous credit score for being prepared when his quantity was referred to as.”
The Atkinson clan was bleeding blue and orange lengthy earlier than Linsanity — or the Knicks’ 1973 title, for that matter.
“We have been Knicks followers eternally,” Michael mentioned.
The brothers have been additionally simply as intense with each other as Walt Frazier’s group was with the remainder of the affiliation.
“Everyone was aggressive, all people had their very own stage of confidence,” mentioned Michael, the eldest at 71.
There was one thing about Kenny, the second youngest who’s now 58, that stood out effectively earlier than he grew to become the pinnacle coach of the Brooklyn Nets from 2016 to 2020 and received an NBA Championship with the Warriors as an assistant in 2022.
Primarily, it was self-discipline and work ethic handed down by their Marine officer father Neil, and Pauline, a no-nonsense mother who as soon as chased Kenny with a Wiffle ball bat when he was a 6-year-old.
“When you have got eight youngsters — eight boys — you higher have self-discipline,” Michael mentioned.
“He simply took, and I feel you noticed it [during Game 7], that stage of focus and depth simply to a different stage.”
It was a driving cause Kenny was the one sibling pulled from Northport public faculties for St. Anthony’s, a program led on the time by the late Gus Alfieri, a neighborhood basketball legend and St. John’s Corridor of Famer.
A middle-school-aged Alan Hahn, who would go on to play for the Friars and LIU earlier than turning into a Knicks analyst with MSG Community, nonetheless remembers being starstruck when he noticed Atkinson play as a helper at a Lengthy Island basketball camp within the Eighties.
“The primary participant that drew my consideration and made me go, ‘Wow,’ was Kenny,” Hahn mentioned.
“It was a counselors and coaches sport at lunchtime. He’s such a competitor, dominated the scrimmages, and I used to be simply drawn to him ever since. … He was my first basketball idol.”
Atkinson was all about paying it ahead, and that zeal was palpable in any instruction he gave to up-and-coming Lengthy Islanders.
Each Michael and Hahn mentioned Kenny’s basketball “lectures” have been something however educational.
“The man was dripping with sweat when he was finished,” Hahn mentioned.
“When he was a participant growth man, he was simply as drenched in sweat because the participant he was warming up for the sport.”
Lengthy Island is pleased with the homegrown hoops guru’s success — however locals will simply have a humorous approach of exhibiting it within the subsequent few days.
“In fact I shall be rooting for the Knicks,” St. Anthony’s alumni affairs director Denise Creighton wrote on Fb, “however CONGRATULATIONS to Friar Alum Kenny Atkinson and the Cavs on their defeat of the Pistons.”
