The Cleveland Cavaliers have faced all sorts of challenges this season, a number of which have been directly related to lingering health issues. The Isaiah Thomas experiment was doomed by a bum hip almost from the beginning, and Kevin Love’s nearly two-month absence because of a broken hand has presented its own set of problems.
Fortunately for the Cavs, Love returned on Monday night against the Bucks and barely missed a beat, but even that was tempered by the troubling news that head coach Tyronn Lue would be taking a leave of absence to deal with chest pain and other health concerns.
In that same statement, it was announced that assistant coach Larry Drew would step in on an interim basis until Lue is slated to return. And though Drew is indeed acting as head coach in his stead, Lue will still reportedly be in charge of lineup decisions.
Via Cleveland.com:
“I’ll talk to Ty,” Drew said after the Cavs’ 124-117 win over the Milwaukee Bucks Monday. “We’ll talk about it. He’s got the final say-so. Whatever he wants, then that’s what we’re going to go with. But if he tells me to make a decision, then I’ll have to make a decision. But we’ll talk. We’ll talk probably tonight. If not tonight, probably tomorrow. Once we do get our full squad back, decisions will have to be made and as a a staff we’ll make them.”
Lue and Drew will certainly have some decisions to make when a small handful of injured players return to action in the very near future. Rodney Hood, Larry Nance Jr., Cedi Osman, and Tristan Thompson have all been banged up lately but are on track to come back as early as this week.
With just 12 regular-season games remaining, the Cavs don’t just need to get healthy. The team has to start figuring out their rotations, which notoriously shrink in the postseason, yet it presents a more complicated equation for Cleveland given all their new acquisitions from the trade deadline.
(Via Cleveland.com)
