Holmgren Report: Quarterback
January 21, 2010Shaq Likes Numbering Centers These Days
January 21, 2010
Per the Twitter of the best NBA beat writer in the business, Brian Windhorst, Cavaliers guard Mo Williams will miss tonight’s game with a sprained shoulder. In fact, Windy says Mo could be out longer than just tonight.
The shoulder injury occurred during Tuesday night’s win over the Raptors at The Q. Windhorst says to expect Delonte West to start in Mo’s place and for Boobie Gibson to move back into the rotation until Mo gets back. A situation like this is exactly why Boobie cannot be dealt as a part of any trade deadline deal. Despite being in and out of the rotation, Gibson is enjoying his finest shooting season of his career, hitting three pointers at a 47% clip.
Not having their all-star point guard just adds more intrigue to tonight’s colossal tilt with the defending champion Los Angeles Lakers, who come in with the best record in the NBA and revenge on their mind. We all remember the beat down the Cavaliers gave the Lakers on Christmas day. Mo was fabulous on that day, leading the Cavs with 28 points (3-3 from deep) and seven assists.
Update 5:45PM: Mo will be out 4-6 weeks with the shoulder sprain. Per Windy, the Cavs are lucky that no surgery will be required as he could have missed four months)
(Photo by Andrew D. Bernstein/NBAE via Getty Images)
26 Comments
Hard to overstate the loss of your second leading scorer. Delonte and Boobie are going to need to step up big time. From reading Windy’s full articles, it sounded like Mo could be out for a decent amount of time. Cavs will likely have to pull the trigger on an emergency point guard a la Antonio Daniels, Brevin Knight, etc.
This kills us. Not just for tonight either. I’m hoping it isn’t that bad. I’ll take him out for a week or two now, with all our home games coming up, instead of in the playoffs. BUT, the other night Windy (I think) said the injury is similar to what happened to Wade last season. It put him out for the season. Let’s hope and pray that Mo is going to be ok with a little sitting out and that he will not require surgery. GO CAVS
those darn canucks!
Not that Mo’s injury is a blessing in disguise or anything, but I’m actually looking forward to seeing how Delonte runs the team. I think having him run point at the end of games will help with ball movement & get the Cavs out of LeISO. Yeah, sure – this comes down to LeBron – but – as Windhorst mentioned yesterday in his chat – both LeBron & Mo have been guilty of ignoring the plays the coaches are calling at the end of games. If memory serves correctly, Delonte is much better about running what is called.
I’m also looking forward to Boobie getting more minutes. The kid deserves playing time.
The dreaded injury bug I wondered how long it would be before this team lost a major cog. The bright side is at least it’s not LeBron the dark side is it had to be Mo and not someone like Gibson or Hickson who are useless. I wouldn’t count on much from Gibson, ever which means it’ll be on Delonte’s shoulders. It would be nice if Anthony Parker or as I call him Daniel Gibson Sr. would start to contribute a little more too. I warned people not to get to high on Parker that he wasn’t as good as he should be and that he disappeared in Toronto. The same thing is happening in Cleveland but that’s what happens when you have a roster full of role players like a Parker, Moon, Varejao, Gibson and Hickson. The injury to Mo underlines the fact that Ferry needs to add another scorer.
@Cavsanity “The kid deserves playing time,” one question: WHY?
@boogeyman
Per Windhorst: “Mike Brown said this morning that Daniel Gibson will be back in the rotation. There’s no replacing Williams, he’s an All-Star and the team’s second-best player. But Gibson was in the middle of having his best season when Brown decided to stop playing so many small guards and use Moon and Parker more. He’s not as quick as Williams and not as good of a ball handler, but the one thing he was showing before he lost minutes was how far he’s come in developing the ability to create his own shot. In years past, he couldn’t do it at all. When he got time earlier, he was showing development. This is a big chance for him because it doesn’t sound like Williams is going to be back any time soon. “
Everyone settle down. The Cavs are in first, with the Celtics looking like crap, and the All-Star break in the near future. If Mo has to wait til after the all star game I’m fine with that. Worst case scenario we get him back right around the time Leon Powe comes back and we have all kinds of time to get both back in the swing of things for the playoffs. Boobie loves the big stage, I’m expecting a big game from him tonight.
You gotta believe this might change Ferry’s mindset as the deadline approaches. While it is debatable how deep our ballhandling personnel runs when Mo is healthy, there is no denying the shortage of it now. I’d love to see a list of PGs we might go after to shore up this gaping hole.
As always, I will wait for the estimated timetable before worrying or shrugging this off.
If turns out to be season ending, Ferry will have to do something to try and save the season.
If it is a couple of weeks, it will probably end up keeping Mo fresh in the playoffs, something he was defintely NOT last year.
I don’t think we’ll take a step back with the starter’s. I think Delonte is the second best player on the team.. may not be the second highest scorer.. But Delonte is really good.. Where we’re going to hurt is with the second team. Delonte handeling the ball has been what’s helping Boobie with his shooting this year. Boobie isn’t a pure point.. he’s a shooter. Other people need to make shots for boobie..
We shouldn’t overreact, but this bench will be similar to last years bench.
I checked Mo’s twitter page and found this nugget from a couple of weeks ago about Colt McCoy and the BCS title game:
Colt is officially soft. He has a strain shoulder and missed the biggest game of his career
8:02 PM Jan 7th from Echofon
Karma’s got a sense of humor.
IMO, i don’t think we need mo for this game. The Lakers just don’t match-up good with us and even with mo out, i don’t think we’ll be missing much. D.West is pretty good and can run a team just as good as mo. I still think we will win but look for the lakers to be really mad after what happened on Christmas day.lol.
They’ll fight, but to no avail
How could Mo have finished the game against Toronto yet be too sore to play on ESPN against the Lakers? Daniel Gibson drives me insane. His inability to create his own shot and lack of defense just make me loony. I am going tonight and I hope for Cleveland’s sake, Boobie proves me wrong.
This makes the IGGY trade sound much more appealing now. Having Iggy at the 2, and Parker off the bench with West running the point. That is if Mo is going to miss significant time.
Gotta get it done Danny or your season could be in jeapordy .
Thats why you need 3 legitimate scorers on a team. I question Mo even being one myself.
Honestly Boobie can get the job done. Fisher is a complete thug and I have no respect for him. He plays like a jerk. Drop 20 on him Boobie.
@ natty-
Yeah, there’s so much talk on here about us needing a big man to score.. Well, we just saw how thin our scoring options are.. Mo’s out and we’re left scrambling hoping Boobie can handle point off the bench and still get his shots.. I say get Iggy, try to frind a big man in FA.. there’s a couple good ones out there.. and a player like Channing Frye can terminate his contract.. He’s a solid role player we could pick up..
I posted a few notable FA on the Iggy trade rumor post
This really hurts tonight. I thought Mo’s shooting was going to be a key v. Lakers.
Agree that Boobie is not a real point guard, a horrible ball handler against aggressive on-ball defenders. He looks panicky out there and doesn’t see the floor very well, like he expects to get stripped.
@Dave
In the Toronto game he was already warmed up, loose, and had adrenaline flowing. After he slowed down and his muscles tightened up it probably began to hurt more. It’s not unheard of for a player to finish a game but not be able to play the next one.
um, mattyfos, what FA bigs are available now that are even worth a sniff? or are you already looking past the end of this season and into the offseason? and why would channing frye terminate and come running to us now when he shot us down 6 months ago?
Is it me or has Mo NOT been the same since last regular season? Hes just not the same guy and yeah he scores about 17 or 18 a game but how many shots do he take to get those? Bottomline is the cavs only have 2 TRUE scorers and thats D.West and we all know the other one.lol. But nothing is funny about this.
I’ve heard Mo name in trade talks for CP3 and a few draft picks. That doesn’t sound that bad to me because WHO IS MO WILLIAMS? Really.
WHO IS MO WILLIAMS? Is he the guy that looks good in the regular season or is he the guy that showed up in the post-season? By the way, he missed a bunnie at the end of that game 1 in the Eastern Conference Finals that would have made the series alot closer. He didn’t show up. If he can stay consistent for a whole season (including post-season) we could walk to A Championship this year with no trades needed.
[…] for the most part over the past 2 seasons. Well, now the seemingly unthinkable has happened, and Mo Williams is out with an injury. Other than LeBron himself, Mo Williams has shown himself to be a physical specimen […]
Mo is only down like 2% from the floor from last year, and down like 1% from 3 from last year. Even then he’s 45% from the floor and 43% from three. That’s not terribly inefficient, especially when you look at Delonte’s 45% from the floor and 37% from 3 this season.
Whoever told you that the Hornets were willing to trade Chris Paul for Mo Williams and draft picks was probably basing that on NBA 2K10.
Out 4-6 weeks…ouch. I know Gibson is shooting well, but to know that he’s out there getting tons of minutes worries me. Not that Mo is great defensively, but Gibson is still a matador, and that’s an improvement from the past few years. We talk a lot about getting Jamison/Iggy/David West/etc., but we really need a backup PG who can give starting minutes if necessary.
We’ll probably start seeing Danny Green quite a bit as well. With a long homestand coming up, that would be an ideal time to get him some quality minutes as well.
@DJ: YES! I would love to see what we got with D.Green. I like his size and shooting so hopfully we’ll see if he has potential or not.
Trying (yes trying) to look at the positives, I’m glad there is no surgery involved. That would have really been bad. While this obviously isn’t good, it does allow for Mo to be more rested come playoff time as someone already stated. That’s key as we know from last yr.
As for pg trades, let’s see how we do with West starting and Gibson getting PT again. As long as West is there mentally and Gibson is decent, we can get through the next 4-6 without doing anything drastic to the guards.