The Cleveland Cavaliers are riding the roller coaster of emotions this season, with the breakouts of their young core and key wins coming alongside player absences and devastating injuries. Just this week Evan Mobley cleared health and safety protocols the same day that Darius Garland went in. Later that same day the Cavs went up 20 on the New Orleans Pelicans despite missing multiple key players, but then gave up the lead and potentially lost Ricky Rubio to a serious knee injury.
At the time of writing we are waiting for an update on the severity of Rubio’s injury, but at a minimum, he will be out for weeks. Add in the indeterminate amount of time that the team will be without Darius Garland, and the team suddenly has a major question mark at arguably basketball’s most important position.
The Cavs are down their two point guards with Darius Garland in health and safety protocols and Ricky Rubio suffering a knee injury. Who could replace them?
Head coach J.B. Bickerstaff should be getting the bulk of his rotation back from health and safety protocols over the next couple of days, but for some amount of time he will need to field a rotation without its three best ball-handlers: Garland, Rubio and Collin Sexton, already out for the season with a knee injury.
Who is a candidate to start while Garland is out? Let’s look at the slim number of candidates first. Then we’ll evaluate the roster for options to fill in the guard rotation off the bench. Finally, what is our prediction for how the starting lineup and rotation will look like without them?
Who starts for Cavs at point guard?
The depth chart for the Cleveland Cavaliers at point guard reads as such: Darius Garland, Ricky Rubio, Kevin Pangos. All things being equal, “next man up” means that Pangos should slide into the starting lineup. Is that what is going to happen?
Pangos is a Canadian guard who attended Gonzaga and graduated in 2015. He went undrafted and spend the last six years playing in Europe, where he had a prolific career. In 2018 while with the Lithuanian club Zalgiris he made the EuroLeague Final Four, and just last season he made the All-EuroLeague First Team. One of the best guards in Europe, he looked like a great option for the team’s third point guard position.
That production has not translated over to the NBA in any meaningful way. Pangos has appeared in just 15 games, which isn’t that surprising or telling on its own given the quality of Garland and Rubio ahead of him. Yet even when absences have provided him an opportunity he has failed to capitalize, most recently and glaringly going scoreless in just eight minutes in the team’s loss to the New Orleans Pelicans Tuesday night.
Pangos is not very athletic and looks slow compared to NBA defenders. He is a smart basketball player with an array of craft moves, and when he does get to the rim he finishes well. The most important skill he needs to have with this roster fit is shooting, and Pangos has hit just 36.4 percent of his shots and 31.3 percent of his 3-pointers. Even if he starts, the Cavs can’t expect much offensive production out of him.
The problem is that there is no clear option elsewhere on the roster. Denzel Valentine has some playmaking chops, but he is even slower than Pangos and would struggle to create in the pick-and-roll with Evan Mobley and Jarrett Allen. Dylan Windler can’t stay on the court and doesn’t have the handle necessary to initiate the offense.
The wild card factor is giving RJ Nembhard some run. He played 12 minutes in a blowout win over the Toronto Raptors and tallied six assists. In the G League this season he is averaging 6.2 assists per game. He isn’t a much better shooter than Pangos or Valentine but he isn’t worse, either. The Cavs could start Nembhard as their best pick-and-roll initiator with the bigs.
Who will play at backup guard for the Cavs?
Replacing Ricky Rubio doesn’t just mean finding a backup point guard, it also means filling a number of minutes at shooting guard. 53 percent of his minutes this season have come alongside another point guard (almost all of those being with Darius Garland) and the Cavs have had a +16.6 point differential in those 500 or so minutes.
The point guard minutes will likely be filled by a combination of Kevin Pangos and RJ Nembhard. Perhaps a few minutes each game can go with Denzel Valentine or Isaac Okoro as the nominal “point guard” with Evan Mobley and Kevin Love facilitating out of the high post.
Cedi Osman will play the largest role on the wing, shifting more of his minutes over to the 2 instead of operating as the backup 3 with Rubio and Garland. Valentine will likely be a fixture in the rotation, but Bickerstaff has liked him sliding down the lineup to the 3 or 4; even if he plays him in the backcourt it won’t be for significant minutes as the solo play starter.
Finally, the team could look to bring in another player, either using a hardship exception or by cutting one of their big men (Ed Davis or Tacko Fall). One option is Kyle Guy, who is playing for their G League affiliate the Canton Charge and is averaging 20 points per game. Any street free agent is unlikely to provide much value, but they could find a steadying presence somewhere if Rubio is out for the season.
Predicting the Cavs backcourt rotation
Starters: Kevin Pangos (24 minutes), Isaac Okoro (32 minutes)
Pangos gets at least the first chance at starting, but he won’t be operating with a long leash given his poor play and frigid shooting thus far. He has a track record of playing well in Europe and a few bad games and just 82 total minutes shouldn’t erase that.
I do think the team wants to give RJ Nembhard minutes too, so Pangos won’t play as many as the other starters. Okoro becomes even more valuable as a backcourt defender with Rubio out, so his minutes stay robust. He has some playmaking skills that could work in certain lineups as the lead creator.
Bench: RJ Nembhard (14 minutes), Cedi Osman (12 minutes at shooting guard), Denzel Valentine (14 minutes)
Nembhard could leap over Pangos with solid play, perhaps even to the point that the Cavs cut Pangos loose late in the season in order to sign Nembhard to a full contract, a la Dean Wade last season. He will get some minutes to see how he does with Garland and Rubio out, with the best of the two securing the backup spot when Garland clears protocols in a few games.
Cedi Osman and Denzel Valentine will likely fill the remaining minutes at backup shooting guard, with Valentine or Okoro handling a few minutes as the nominal point guard to fill out the rest of the rotation. Bickerstaff does prefer a tighter rotation, so he could easily cut out Valentine or shift him elsewhere in the lineup.
However things shake out, this will be a rough patch to weather without Garland, one of the league’s breakout stars, and one of its steadiest backup point guards in Ricky Rubio, who was having the best scoring season of his career. Kevin Pangos and RJ Nembhard won’t be able to fill those shoes to any meaningful degree; it now becomes a story of surviving until Garland returns.