Cavs: Grades are in and team is hanging on, but barely

It’s a battle of reality and the injury bug hitting the Cleveland Cavaliers at this point of the season. They stand at 9-8 after a recent three-game losing streak. Dealing with injuries can be tough for most teams and the Cavaliers are no exception. They’ve tried bandaging up the cuts, but the bleeding hasn’t stopped yet and it could continue to drip for a while.

The team has played with great effort during this losing stretch but haven’t been able to secure wins down the stretch.

With that let’s break down the latest grade card for the team’s starters that has been filled with some players that had been key bench players and now have been placed with the heavy responsibility of trying to mimic the previous starters stat lines, which is an impossible task.

Darius Garland Grade: B

With the Cavs starting guard Collin Sexton being injured and now lost for good, after season-ending knee surgery, Darius Garland is being looked at even more as a leader on this young team. To this point he’s done pretty well. Before the Sexton injury, Garland’s skills to help the Cavaliers was to help distribute the ball more and be that well needed facilitator.

Since the injury to his teammate, it seems even more that fans are expecting Garland to take more shots and try and score more, since the team is playing more bench players and not quite sure what they’ve got with them. In the three recent losses, Garland has put up 17, 24 and 25 points. His number of shot attempts has gone up compared to his normal average. He put up 22 and 26 shots in two of the games.

I don’t believe, even with the rotation of more bench players into the starting five of late with the club having been banged up, that Garland is best serving his team to try and score more in those situations. The other starters will need to contribute, even more as the season progresses. Fortunately, Lauri Markkanen and Jarrett Allen are reportedly likely to return on Monday versus the Brooklyn Nets, though.