Can the Cleveland Cavaliers be the team to beat when healthy?

The Cleveland Cavaliers have won five straight games after losing to the Chicago Bulls to open the season. While it has been impressive and encouraging, we all look ahead to when we get our entire team healthy and see what this team with a healthy Kyrie Irving and Iman Shumpert will be like.

We can only assume that the team will be exponentially better than the current product on the court. The one thing that has haunted the Cavaliers organization since last June was the rash of injuries that effectively stole the NBA championship from a team capable of winning it.

Every team has to deal with injuries. It is how the depth on the team responds to these hardships that quantifies it as being a sound professional basketball team capable of winning it all.

With no further information about when Irving will return, we assume he is still rehabbing the knee-cap injury that caused him to miss the majority of the NBA Finals and led him to surgery to repair the broken knee-cap.

Iman Shumpert also has been working on a return to the team and the starting line-up. He will add a wrinkle to the Cavaliers starting five that will give the team the defensive wing that can guard one’s through three’s. He also has a pretty good shot from beyond the arc when he is healthy.

The pleasant surprise of the season thus far? The play of Kevin Love. He too had playoff-ending surgery to fix his dislocated shoulder and ligament damage that occurred in the first round vs. the Boston Celtics. Love has come into this season more fit, stronger and seemingly more motivated than last season. We have seen him much more in the post and low-block with much success. It’s too early to say that he is having a season similar to what he accomplished in Minnesota, but he looks to have improved his game and the team has installed new sets exclusively to take advantage of his abilities in the paint.

Another player coming off a season ending injury is Anderson Varejao. From what we have seen this season, he is the second big off the bench, so his minutes should be less than 20, more like around 12-15. That is exactly what the Cavaliers need to do to make sure that all their bigs are healthy come April/May/June.

The only player who seems to be still regaining his last year’s form is Timofey Mozgov. He had a knee procedure during the off-season and has said recently that he still feels some discomfort. Mozgov IS the teams inside presence and rim protector. No other big has the ability to block or alter shots the way Mozgov has. Will less minutes help him regain his energy and lift? Head coach David Blatt has been playing him less and giving more minutes to Tristan Thompson in hopes to slowly recoup his form from just last season. If Thompson could add rim protection to his arsenal, he would be more than worth his 82,000,000 contract.

With so many injury concerns for the Cleveland Cavaliers, can they get healthy and challenge the title defending Golden State Warriors?  The Warriors seem to be running away with the Western Conference and are the only unbeaten team in the NBA at 6-0.

If the Cavaliers get the team healthy by the end of January, they will have plenty of time to regain the chemistry that had them as one of the best offenses in the NBA and a squad that only lost 9 games after January 15, 2015. The difference this year is the scoring coming off the bench has bench huge!

When playing in the playoffs, Blatt will have a bench capable of maintaining or even adding to leads handed to them by the starting five.

The season is still early. We see the improvements made to the Cavaliers bench. Now we just have to be patient and remember this: it’s not who’s healthy starting the season, its who’s healthy entering the playoffs.

The Cleveland Cavaliers have a plan, they are on the same page and are laser focused to be healthy this year entering the playoffs in May.

Will the so-called “basketball gods” favor them?