CLEVELAND — Editor's note: the video in the player above is from a previous story.
The Cleveland Cavaliers are in the midst of a playoff race that few expected prior to the season, and they’re doing it the only way this team knows how to-- through adversity.
Right now, the Cavaliers currently sit tied for fourth place in the Eastern Conference with the Milwaukee Bucks -- the NBA’s reigning champions -- and 4.5 games behind the conference-leading Miami Heat. The two teams are both 2.5 games in front of the seventh-place Toronto Raptors in a race that guarantees a playoff series for each of the top six teams. Teams that finish seventh through 10 will have to take part in the play-in tournament, something that Cavs, and every other team, should desperately want to avoid.
For the Cavs to avoid that scenario, they’ll need to reach a combination of 20 wins and losses by the Raptors. With 21 games remaining in the season, this is a very doable task (the magic number for the Cavs to make the play-in as a worst-case scenario is 14, something that should be no issue). For example, if the Cavs finish out the season with a record of 11-10 across their final 21, the Raptors would need to go 14-8 for the Cavs to be relegated to seventh, in a vacuum.
The difficult part for the Cavs isn’t so much that they’re now being treated like a playoff team by opponents, but rather that they’ve been forced to operate as a team without a point guard thanks to various injuries.
Throughout the season, the Cavs have had to do quite a bit of fighting through injuries, and right now may be close to the pinnacle of it. Yes, the team has been without guard Collin Sexton due to season-ending knee surgery in November, lost Ricky Rubio to a torn ACL before trading him for Caris LeVert in February, and has had a number of guys in and out of the lineup. But right now, as the team battles for playoff positioning, it’s a very tough ask to win games, especially against playoff-caliber opponents, without a real point guard on the floor.
LeVert is currently sidelined with a sprained foot after stepping on a teammate's foot in practice, All-Star point guard Darius Garland has missed the team’s last three games while dealing with a bone bruise in his back, and veteran backup Rajon Rondo is also out with a toe sprain suffered in the team’s loss to Detroit in late February.
In summation, the team’s three best ballhandlers are all sidelined, leaving the Cavs to play the likes of Brandon Goodwin, currently on a two-way contract, Tim Frazier, currently on a 10-day contract, and Cedi Osman, who is a secondary playmaker at best.
Teams situated like this typically aren’t impressive or competitive. It’s incredibly difficult to win in the NBA while shorthanded, especially when it all seems to be at one position on the floor. Monday night’s loss to the Minnesota Timberwolves was the latest example of who the Cavs are right now -- at least to an extent.
Anytime that the Wolves needed to take control back of the game, they just put pressure on the primary ball-handler for the Cavs and it worked. That’s how a 14-point lead in the first quarter turned into a 23-point deficit in the second half. With that said, the fight that the Cavs showed to come all the way back from 23 points down to tie the game with less than a minute left was wildly impressive, even if it was a result at the end.
As the playoff race rages on, all the Cavaliers can do is continue to fight until health is restored, and at that point, the team must hope it's still in a good position to remain in a top-six spot in the Eastern Conference.