Cavaliers sign coach Bickerstaff to multiyear contract extension
CLEVELAND » Cavaliers coach J.B. Bickerstaff has received a multiyear contract extension for his role in the team’s dramatic turnaround.
Cleveland announced Bickerstaff’s signing on Saturday. Terms of the deal were not released.
ESPN reported Bickerstaff is under contract through the 2026-27 season.
After winning just 22 games last season, the Cavs are 19-13 and fifth in the Eastern Conference. They recently won six straight games, but were hit with a COVID-19 outbreak and had to place eight players in health protocols.
The affable 42-year-old Bickerstaff took over when John Beilein walked away midway through the 2019 season. Prior to coaching in Cleveland, Bickerstaff was an interim coach in Houston and Memphis.
The Cavs won only 19 games in Bickerstaff’s abbreviated first season, but were showing great promise before the season was interrupted by the COVID-19
pandemic. Cleveland was ravaged by injuries last season, and finished 22-50.
Expectations were low heading into this season, but the arrival of rookie forward Evan Mobley, the No. 3 overall draft pick, and veteran guard Ricky Rubio have been huge factors in the Cavs’ rise.
College football GEORGIA STATE WINS CAMELLIA BOWL »
Darren Grainger passed for 203 yards and three touchdowns and ran for 122 yards and a fourth TD to lead Georgia State to a 51-20 victory over Ball State in the Camellia Bowl.
The Panthers (8-5) finished with their seventh win in eight games and dominated the lone bowl played on Christmas Day.
Grainger completed 15 of 19 passes and carried 11 times, including a play fake midway through the third quarter when he scampered 34 yards untouched into the end zone. It was the first 100-yard rushing game of his career, and he was named the game MVP.
Ball State (6-7) couldn’t summon up many big plays after Drew Plitt’s 56-yard touchdown bomb to Jayshon Jackson for an early lead.
NFL RODGERS BREAKS FAVRE’S RECORD »
Aaron Rodgers has overtaken Brett Favre to become the Green Bay Packers’ leader in career touchdown passes.
Rodgers threw his 443rd career touchdown pass with an 11-yard completion to Allen Lazard in the first quarter of the Packers’ game with the Cleveland Browns. Lazard caught the pass at around the 7-yard line, headed upfield and dived into the right corner of the end zone to give the Packers a 7-6 lead.
Favre threw 508 touchdown passes during his Hall of Fame career, but only 442 of them with Green Bay. Favre threw 22 touchdown passes with the New York Jets in 2008 and 44 with the Minnesota Vikings from 2009-10.
Rodgers, the 24th overall pick in the 2005 draft out of California, backed up Favre for three seasons before taking over as Green Bay’s starting quarterback in 2008.
RAVENS WITHOUT TOP 2 QUARTERBACKS » The Baltimore Ravens put quarterback Tyler Huntley on the reserve/COVID-19 list, leaving them without their top two QBs for Sunday’s showdown at Cincinnati for first place in the AFC North.
Lamar Jackson missed last week’s game with a sprained ankle, and the Ravens announced this weekend that he would not travel with the team. Huntley played well in Jackson’s place in last weekend’s loss to Green Bay, but now Josh Johnson is the team’s top healthy quarterback.
The Ravens signed the 35-year-old journeyman Johnson before last week’s game. He appeared in three games earlier this season for the New York Jets.
NBA
BUCKS 117, CELTICS 113 »
Giannis Antetokounmpo returned from the NBA’s healthy and safety protocols to score 36 points, and Wesley Matthews hit a 3-pointer with 30.3 seconds left to give Milwaukee its first lead in the Bucks’ victory over Boston.
Seeing his first action since Dec. 12, Antetokounmpo played 30 minutes and connected on 13 of 23 shots while shooting 10 for 15 from the free-throw line. Milwaukee also got center Bobby Portis and guard Donte DiVincenzo back from COVID-19 protocols. KNICKS 101, HAWKS 87 » Kemba Walker became the seventh NBA player with a triple-double on Christmas, and New York beat depleted Atlanta for its first victory on the holiday in a decade.
Julius Randle had 25 points and 12 rebounds for the Knicks in a matchup of teams that met in the first round of last season’s playoffs. But the Hawks were missing Trae Young among nine players in the NBA’s health and safety protocols, so it wasn’t much of a rematch of Atlanta’s fivegame victory.