It's hard to argue that a Cleveland Cavaliers team that has spent a considerable amount of time behind only the Boston Celtics in the Eastern Conference standings has been "devastated" by injuries. But how do you exclude them from this list when Evan Mobley, Jarrett Allen, Darius Garland and Donovan Mitchell have appeared in
just 22 games together this season?
Cleveland's top four talents have been playing injury Whac-a-Mole all year.
Garland fractured his jaw on Dec. 14 and didn't return until Jan. 31.
Tangential note to the rest of the NBA: Please stop hitting Garland in the face. He missed four games after getting poked in the eye on opening night and was fed up with getting clocked in the noggin
before incurring his pair of injuries this season.
"I told them I need a mask at this point or some goggles or something because it's getting out of hand," Garland told
Chris Fedor of Cleveland.com way back in December 2022. "I'm just tired of getting hit in my face."
Anyway, Allen actually kicked off Cleveland's one-up, one-down season by missing the first five games of the year. He's been available since then and deserves massive credit for the Cavs' top-five defense, but Mitchell has had four separate instances of multiple missed games in a row with the longest of those spanning from March 1 to March 11. He won't clear the 65-game threshold for All-NBA consideration.
Then there's Mobley, who appeared in Cleveland's first 21 games but went down on Dec. 8 and had arthroscopic surgery on his left knee 10 days later. He returned on Jan. 29 and appeared in 17 of the Cavs' next 18 contests before an ankle injury iced him again on March 5.
Cleveland will have a half-dozen rotation players top 60 games, and Allen and Max Strus could hit 70. But this team is going to enter the playoffs having seen its best four players share the floor for just 305 total minutes, only 48 of which have come
after the All-Star break.
