At some point in this Cavs season we knew this would happen. Things would not go as they had early. There would be problems. Struggles. And injuries.
The Cavs have their fill now that Delonte West has broken a bone in his right wrist. West spoke in Chicago of being able to play on the West Coast road trip next week, but that's a pipe dream. West will miss at least a couple weeks, perhaps four, according to my medical intuition.
This hurts in several ways. West is a hard-nosed defender who was having a good season. He fit well into the mix. On top of it, the Cavs already are without Zydrunas Ilgauskas, and Ben Wallace has the flu. They have to play the second half of a back-to-back Friday night at home against New Orleans and superstar guard Chris Paul.
This does not mean the end of a season, but it certainly will challenge the Cavs pursuit of the best record in the Eastern Conference. These injuries come at a time when they face New Orleans, then head West (no pun intended) for three games — including a Monday stop in L.A. to play the Lakers. It will be a challenge, but Boston has faced a challenge with its losing streak and eventually Orlando will face a challenge. The Cavs can take comfort in the fact that they have the best player in the league on their side, and that Mo Williams has not really needed to play an aggressive offensive style game in and game out. Those weapons are there.
That being said, I would bet that we'll see Sasha Pavlovic return to the starting lineup until West is back. Mike Brown likes to keep things consistent, and Daniel Gibson and Wally Szczebiak have been coming off the bench so I'd guess they'll continue to come off the bench. I'd guess Pavlovic will start and play 14-to-18 minutes per game, with Daniel Gibson and Williams getting most of the time at guard.
It's not a good thing to lose a hard-nosed player like West, especially defensively. And the absence of Z is felt. But these things happen in an 82-game season, West's injury is to his non-shooting wrist, and he said on TNT he won't need surgery. It's clearly better to have these things happen now, in January, than in May when the pursuit of the title takes place.
An aside: It's always interesting when someone gets hurt. Other guys say they will have to "step up" to replace them. I learned a long time ago that stepping up is overrated. As one NFL player told me: If you've been starting and you say you're going to step up because someone got hurt, you're basically saying you weren't doing everything possible to win in the first place. Makes sense. The guy who has to "step up" is the guy who takes the place of the injured guy.
It's kind of like when people say that Joe Blow had to "overcome" a lot to get where he is. That he didn't start at first or some other ridiculous garbage like that. Like that's "overcoming" anything. Or that teams have to "bounce back." How will you bounce back from this loss? How will you bounce back from this injury? How will you bounce back from this gizmo that you inflate and then hit and it bounces back and hits you in the face and knocks you down? How can you ever "bounce back" from that?
Sports and their terms sure can get silly sometimes.
I don't think that is what "step up" means at all. It means you are going to have to take on a role(s) that other guys have provided in the past. No one expected Sasha to handle a game like West. Now he will have to at least approximate that role.
Pavlovic is a disaster. I would rather see Brown get creative in using some other small lineups. Sasha plays no defense, consistently turns the ball over, and boggs down the offense. The only player slower on the team is Wally and both should be traded. Delonte is a huge loss. He is one of the most underrated players on the team.