The Cleveland Cavaliers are not a complete basketball team right now. This is obvious based on their 4-6 record and their loss to the Atlanta Hawks on Sunday night. For a team that has its eyes on making it to the NBA Finals for the fourth year in a row, this is less than ideal.
The good news is the team has an All-NBA point guard on its bench, and once he gets healthy, he should be able to give the team a spark. While Isaiah Thomas isn’t exactly known for his defensive prowess, his ability to score and set up his teammates is among the best in the league.
The only downside is that his current timetable to recover from a hip injury is slated to hold him out for another two months or so. But if Cleveland.com’s Joe Vardon is to be believed, that might need to be pushed up a bit, as he wrote that the timetable “seems to be accelerating.”
Though there has been no official update on that target from the Cavs, Thomas’ on-court work has increased at practice and before games. He received a full training-table stretching and treatment before Friday’s game in Washington, and then hit the court for stationary, one-dribble, and two-dribble shooting, as well as some half-speed drives to the hoop.
Sunday, he was running on the court.
While Ty Lue said he does not know if the timetable has changed at all, this is generally a good sign for Cleveland. Obviously it would hurt the team if Thomas is trying to rush himself back onto the floor before he’s 100 percent — especially with an injury as tricky as a bum hip — although it stands to reason that the training and coaching staffs would pump the breaks on whatever he’s doing if it’s something his body cannot handle.
Getting Thomas back wouldn’t magically fix Cleveland’s porous defense, but he’s still one of the best point guards in the league, and would give the Cavs a shot in the arm. At the very least, getting him back sooner gives the team more time to figure out what it needs to do to its roster if it wants to win a title.
(Via Cleveland.com)
