jbk1234 wrote:I didn't feel great about our matchup with the Knicks last year. They had a deep team. We did not. I wasn't sold that Okoro was a reliable option offensively. You had Knicks fans saying Thibs wouldn't bother guarding him (and he didn't). We bought out Love without having a replacement. Wade was injured and JBB didn't trust him. Garland had never been to the playoffs. The Knicks had been on a tear since trading for Hart. I feel differently about this Cavs team and this matchup.
We've been riddled with injuries this season and it seems like we may finally be healing up and we've got a week off. Garland was eating through a straw for a month, he lost 12 lbs, and came back to a team that was down Mitchell, Strus, Mobley, and Wade during the most difficult part of the schedule. Mitchell tried to play through injury and had to shut it down again, but I was encouraged by what I saw Friday against the Pacers from both Mitchell and the team. A lot of postseason success is dependent upon being healthy, and if the Cavs finally are, they're going to be a dangerous team. People, including some Cavs fans, seem to be forgetting that the benefit of having both Mitchell and Garland is that the other team can't sell out to stop both of them. You can't simultaneously tilt towards both of them. The Magic can only assign Suggs to one of them. Add in healthy Strus, who is our best off-ball player, and the Magic are going to find themselves picking a poison.
Garland is still struggling with his energy in 4th quarters, and Mitchell has knee tendinitis that can flare up at any time.
I suppose it's a good thing the Magic are even slower paced than the Cavs, but either of those factors could playout huge in the 4th quarter not just on the offensive side but the defensive side too. Like many teams before them, they focused on improving their offense only to see their greatest weapon (their defense) fall off significantly.
Every now and then we see a team get healthy at just the right time and go on a great playoff run; but every time the Cavs have approached full health (technically never gotten there, thank you so much Ricky Rubio and Ty Jerome) they just suffer another round of injuries.
Will our hopeful thinking put an end to this?