Injuries, injuries, injuries — they have been an endless point of discussion for the Cleveland Cavaliers in recent seasons. Unfortunately for those hoping to see the franchise finally break through, the 2025-26 campaign has not been much different than its predecessors regarding the matter of health.
There are always nuances to how the Cavaliers are afflicted by injuries, but the fact that it keeps happening has become a constant for Cleveland. The Cavs traded away Darius Garland to rid themselves of one injury concern. They are now staring down a whole separate issue.
The Cavaliers have room for optimism since adding James Harden to the team. However, the true ceiling of the new team remains unknown due to untimely absences. The most recent of those has been that of Jarrett Allen. The Cavs starting center continues to miss time with a knee injury.
Cleveland has posted a record of 13-6 since the trade deadline passed, good enough for the seventh-best mark in the NBA. They may be even better than that suggests. They just cannot fully know that until they get each of their main core pieces healthy.
Cavaliers need to see how their new core fits together before the playoffs
The Cavaliers are not one of those teams who do not feel the impact of their top players being absent. Cleveland needs everyone healthy to not skip a beat. Post-trade deadline, they have barely gotten that much.
The revamped edition of the core four has barely gotten any time together on the court post-deadline. Harden, Allen, Donovan Mitchell, and Evan Mobley should be the driving forces of this team. There is barely a relevant sample to analyze how good, or great, they are together.
Those four only have three games with one another due to injuries. Harden, Mitchell, Mobley, and Allen have played 35 minutes as a four-man combination on the court. The issue, too, is that incredibly limited sample size looks downright mind-boggling.
During those minutes, Harden-Mitchell-Mobley-Allen have posted a net rating of 36.7 together. Their offensive rating is 125.0 and the defensive rating is just as elite at 88.3.
Unfortunately for the Cavaliers, they cannot accept this as anything more than an unverified case study. There simply is just not enough proof in the pudding to judge the validity of those numbers.
11 games — that is all there is left in the regular season for the Cavaliers to figure out what their new core looks like and how to best support that group with the pieces they have. On one hand, the Cavs will not rush Allen back from injury. They need him healthy for the postseason. On the other hand, Cleveland will be asking their stars to figure it out on the fly in the NBA Playoffs.
That is a dangerous gamble.