Cavs Have Weathered the Injury Storm
More than three weeks ago, I wrote about The Potential Impact of Big Z's Injury. The Cleveland Cavaliers had only lost five games by that point and I suggested that they might lose five more games before Zydrunas Ilgauskas returned to action.Ilgauskas may be back as soon as Thursday. The Cavs have gone 8-3 without him so far. Before he got hurt they were on pace to set an all-time record for point differential; they have slowed down significantly in that regard but, largely thanks to LeBron James and Anderson Varejao, they have been just successful enough to stay on top of the Eastern Conference standings, as I note in my newest article for CavsNews.com (6/17/15 edit: the link to CavsNews.com no longer works, so I have posted the original article below):
Zydrunas
Ilgauskas may be returning to action as soon as Thursday. Even though the Cavs
obviously missed his length, his physical presence in the paint and his
shooting touch, they scraped together enough wins during his absence to still
contend for the best record in the NBA. In fact, the Cavs only trail the Lakers
by a half game and they have a better winning percentage than the Celtics.
The Cavs were
19-3 when Ilgauskas injured his foot. They went 2-1 in the next three games
without him and then won five games in a row when he came back. He was only
sporadically effective, though, and after he produced eight points and five
rebounds in a 104-95 loss to Miami
the Cavs ran some more tests and discovered that Ilgauskas had a small fracture
in his foot. Ilgauskas has not played since that time and the Cavs have gone
8-3 without him, losing to a horrible Wizards team, a mediocre Bulls team and
the league-leading Lakers. The Cavs beat Boston
and New Orleans at home and finished their
Western road trip with three straight victories after the setback in L.A.
Although the
Cavs have not lost much ground in the standings, they clearly did not play at
the same level without Ilgauskas, not just because 19-3 is obviously a better
record than 10-4 but also because when Ilgauskas was in the fold the Cavs were
posting an astonishing point differential of better than 13 per game, which
would have shattered the NBA record in that category (12.3 ppg, set by the
1971-72 Lakers). Now their point differential has dropped to 10.7 ppg overall (including
7.5 ppg in the past 11 games); that is still tremendous and still the best in
the league this season but the drastic decline reflects that the Cavs have not
only been losing more frequently but also that they have squeaked out some
close decisions, including three wins out West by six points or less.
The two main
players who picked up the slack for Ilgauskas were LeBron James and Anderson
Varejao. James has reached double figures in rebounding five times in the past
11 games after doing so only twice in the first 31 games of the season. He has
shifted to power forward and even center at times when the Cavs used a small
lineup and he has narrowly passed Ilgauskas, Varejao and Ben Wallace to take
over the team lead in rebounding for the season (7.4 rpg). Varejao took
Ilgauskas’ place in the starting lineup and has been playing more minutes than
usual. After not receiving much playing time early in the season, rookie J.J.
Hickson has been pressed into service, taking over Varejao’s role as the first
big man off of the bench. Hickson has played well at times but this is where
injuries really affect a team; Varejao can capably replace Ilgauskas in the
short term but then there is not anyone on the team who can fill Varejao’s old
role.
When starting
shooting guard Delonte West went down with a broken wrist five games ago the
Cavs’ depth was once again tested but Sasha Pavlovic—a starter during the run
to the Finals in 2007—has played well in West’s absence. Cleveland’s performance in the past month
should forever put to rest any notion that this is simply a one man team. While
James is indisputably playing at an MVP level, the Cavs legitimately have 10
players who can be productive members of a winning squad.
Labels: Anderson Varejao, Cleveland Cavaliers, Delonte West, LeBron James, Zydrunas Ilgauskas
posted by David Friedman @ 3:36 AM
2 Comments:
kobe is so good at basketball
JJ Hickson is giving Cleveland some good minutes off the bench. From what I've seen he is an active big man with a fair amount of offensive skill. With Z coming back shortly their frontcourt rotation looks even more solid going forward.
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