Another one bites the dust…and that’s not good
Written By: Rick | Category: Cleveland Cavaliers | Comments: 9 
This is getting ridiculous. Tonight Cavs guard Daniel Gibson left the game with a reported hamstring injury. Already without the services of Pavlovic, Varejao, and Gooden the Cavaliers had no chance against the Rockets, and fell 92-77. LeBron James played well, scoring 32 points and adding 6 assists to go with 7 rebounds. He shot just under 50%, the rest of the Cavs…not so much.
This game was a match-up nightmare for the Cavs. The Rockets are one of the best rebounding teams in the league, as are the Cavs when the front court is intact. The Cavs lost the rebounding battle 55-35. 17 of those Rocket rebounds were offensive. Zydrunas had his hands full with Yao Ming, and wasn’t in position to play much help defense. The Rockets power forward duo of Landry and Scola proved too much for the undersized Cleveland reserves. The smaller Cavs had to resort to more double teams down low, which opened up the outside shooters, and Houston took advantage of open looks particularly in the third quarter.
Tracy McGrady played despite spending time at a Houston hospital with flu-like symptoms. He was given fluids for dehydration and still played 32 minutes. Ming led the Rockets with 22 points, but five Houston players finished in double digits. The only non-Lebron Cavalier with double figures was Larry Hughes who finished with 13. It took Hughes 16 shots and 2 free throws to get those 13 points however. The team, sans James went 19-55. That’s 34% Cleveland fans. That won’t get it done when you are only getting one shot per possession.
Hopefully the news gets better tomorrow and Drew Gooden is well enough to play. I wouldn’t expect Gibson tomorrow, and the team without the pair is woefully short on talent and bodies. Now the Hawks are beatable, but in order to do so LeBron is going to have to put together an epic, plus Ilgauskas will have to suck it up and play big minutes (something he is not known for in the second half of back-to-backs.) The Cavs will also need production from an unexpected source (Devin Brown are you listening?)
The focus for this stretch run to the All-Star break is looking more and more like surviving instead of building momentum for the second half. Let’s all hope that the injury bug is done biting the Cavs.
Author: Rick
Rick is a co-founder and editor of WFNY. His love of Cleveland sports is surpassed only by his faith and love of his family. Follow him on Twitter- @rickwfny.Rick has written 743 articles for Waiting for Next Year.
Most teams would be very excited to play your team in their injured state.
Unfortunately, for my hawks, we thrive on losing this type of game.
exhibit a: the last time we played the clippers.
I demand a better-bearded pic of Gooden next time
My apologies scott…
Now try looking at the Bulls roster.
We even had a guy quit the team to go back to Russia! We’re down 5-6 players at this point!
If this keeps up, I can see Z’s fragile feet go into a spontanious combustion if he keeps playing 38 minutes a night.
Here’s a question…..if Z suffers a career ending injury and retires, are the Cavaliers free of that salary?
I am NOT wishing a career ending injury on Z. I’m just asking the question.
Why does it have to be Z? Couldn’t you have used Hughes as your example there?
Well, that’s where I was headed with this…..I just was trying to relate it to Mike’s point.
RockKing, your question poses a couple of responses. The only real answer is maybe. It’s possible that if he were to suffer a career ending injury while playing that insurance would cover his salary, therefore he would no longer be a cap hit. But if you remember back in the 90’s, Brad Daugherty suffered a back injury that ended his career. The bad part for the Cavs then was that it was right after he signed a lucrative long term deal. Insurance did not pick up his salary and the Cavs got stuck with his cap number for 5 or 6 years. I don’t remember how long. So there you have it.