The close to the regular season did not go how the Cleveland Cavaliers would’ve wanted, as they lost five of seven contests, including them going 1-2 in the closing week.
The past month-plus was not fruitful for the Wine and Gold, who ended up at 44-38 in the 2021-22 regular season. That’s still a heck of a season, based on the expectations initially leading into this campaign.
It just stinks how things turned out, as the club was 35-23 in pre-All-Star break play and seemed to be very likely have a good chance at being a top-6 team in the Eastern Conference.
Injuries have of course played into the less than stellar close to the season for the Cavaliers, though, and Jarrett Allen having been out since March 6 because of a fractured left middle finger has been significant. Evan Mobley had also missed five games prior to Cleveland’s loss at the Brooklyn Nets on Friday due to an ankle sprain, and Caris LeVert at one point missed the first nine post-All-Star break games for Cleveland in relation to a foot sprain.
There’s been other ailments as well throughout the year we don’t need to harp on now, but the Cavs have to try to push forward. They could potentially still make the postseason; they’ll just now need to do so by way of the play-in tournament.
Cleveland ended up being the #8 seed heading into that, and on Tuesday, they’ll face the Nets once again, the #7 seed in the East, in Brooklyn.
The Nets are an offensive juggernaut that has since gotten rolling, and Kyrie Irving is now available for home games for them, and even with the absence of Joe Harris, they have plenty of shooting around Irving and Kevin Durant. That was on display in key stretches on Friday, and has been for a considerable stretch.
So what has to play out for the Cavs on Wednesday to secure a win here, and the seventh seed in the East, then?
In that realm, we’ll stress three keys for the Cavs to hone in on to beat the Nets in Tuesday’s #7-8 play-in game here.
With that, we’ll start with #1.