3 big questions for Cavs team looking to close out regular season strong

The Cleveland Cavaliers have 10 games remaining in the regular season. They stand at 41-31 and are 6th in the Eastern Conference standings. Based on their record and the teams around them in the standings they could finish as high as fifth while if they slipped, they could end up in the eighth or ninth spot. In that case, they’d have to participate in the play-in tournament.

They have control over their destiny as they play the Toronto Raptors Thursday and then play the Chicago Bulls on Saturday, and both of those are huge games. No matter how you slice it, if the team gets the sixth seed, they could very well play the Philadelphia 76ers in the first round of the playoffs, who are currently 4th in the East. The same could go for the Boston Celtics, who are third. Cleveland has struggled against the 76ers this season, in particular, and the matchup would be a tough series, involving the former.

At the moment though, the Cavs are trying to get to the finish line. They’ve had their share of inconsistencies over the last 10 games, going an even 5-5. They haven’t been able to be consistent and they’ve looked like a team trying to hang on and secure a playoff spot.

Now, Cleveland has continued to struggle with player injuries including big man Jarrett Allen and forward Dean Wade. Both have meant a lot to this team this season. While Allen has been a stable presence in the middle of the lane protecting his team’s rim, Wade’s defense has been missed by the team as they are giving up a lot of points of late. Case in point, the team lost to the Los Angeles Lakers 131-120 on Monday night.

Teams scoring 120 points a night should be able to win games. The fact that they didn’t speaks to the problems on defense for this team at the moment. We’ll look a little more closely at that issue next and share a couple of other big questions that the team has to answer if they want to finish the season strong.