LeBron James Sitting 1st Game of Season Saturday Night
LeBron James will miss his first game of the season Saturday night against the Miami Heat.
The Cleveland Cavaliers will be without their best player tonight against his former team. LeBron James is sitting against the Heat after a big game last night. James had stated that he had hoped to play all 82 games this season.
Most thought this was a high hope, and many thought it was also foolish. The Cavs need a healthy James for the NBA Playoffs and a hopeful return to the NBA Finals. The regular season is far less important for the Cavs.
Even without their starting backcourt of Kyrie Irving and Iman Shumpert, the Cavs are just percentage points behind the Chicago Bulls for the #1 seed in the East. While they are already 6 games behind the undefeated Golden State Warriors, health maintenance is more important.
A few notes from Joe Vardon’s piece on Cleveland.com provided some interesting quotes:
"The Cavaliers have been plotting for ways to rest James without missing much game time, but Blatt insisted the special circumstances of playing an overtime game Friday in a different time zone led to his decision.“Just thinking long term here, being conscious of taking care of him and taking care of the team going forward,” Blatt said. “He wanted to play, no question.”"
So it sounds like it was not LeBron’s decision but Blatt won out. That it comes against the Heat was not lost on Blatt either:
"“(James’ desire to play against Miami) was something that was on my mind because I know that this is a special place for ‘Bron and the people here want to see him, I totally understand that,” Blatt said. “We played them four times last year. They’ve seen ‘Bron play with his new team.”"
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For the fans, and the Cavs, this doesn’t seem like a one time thing either. If you have tickets to the back end of a back to back, you might not see King James. Blatt is far more likely to sit LeBron on the road but the pounding of back to backs is concerning enough that he could sit home games as well.
"Now that 82 games is off the table for James, Blatt said there could be more back-to-back games in which James may sit one.“Could be, depending on the situation,” Blatt said. “We want him to play as much as he can and as much as is manageable. … We’ll be monitoring and we’ll be keeping an eye on what the best way is to go through the season with him.”"
It will be interesting how the Cavs fair without 3 of their 4 starters tonight.
Are you surprised LeBron James is sitting already early in December?