The Cleveland Cavaliers are on the 1-yard line with All-Star point guard Darius Garland's return, and it could come as soon as Wednesday night against the Philadelphia 76ers.
Cavs head coach Kenny Atkinson isn't quite comfortable confirming that return, as he has said in the past, not wanting to get ahead of himself. He did note that Garland went through a full practice on Tuesday, though: “We'll see how he responds,” Atkinson said. “Let's see what tomorrow morning looks like.”
Further inquired about Garland's status, Atkinson shared that the final step will be getting the green light from the performance staff. He's taken the steps from going 1-on-1 all the way to playing live 5-on-5, but this will be a “feel-out” situation. Cavs head trainer Stephen Spiro has indicated to him that Garland's conditioning has been good, so there won't be much of a minute restriction.
“I've got to read it,” Atkinson said. “It was like when we played Indiana last year, I guess he went 14 days without, 15 days without practicing, and we just had to read it like, ‘Hey, you're in three minutes, we've got to take you out.'
“I've just got to communicate with him and see where he is. And against Indiana last year, he would ask out sometimes, we’d give him two minutes, go back in. So I could see a little bit of that.”
Getting Garland back will be a tremendous benefit to Cleveland, which has seen more than its fair share of ups and downs offensively.
“He's an advantage maker, right? He can create an advantage just with speed,” Atkinson said of Garland's abilities. “So we become a faster team. And then, he gets into paint a ton obviously, and he makes other people better. I always say he's an elite passer. I put him in the elite category, so we've got that.”
“We have more scorers out there when we're fully healthy,” Dean Wade added. “When those guys come back, they're very, very high-IQ basketball players. So the ball's going to be popping, moving. There's gonna be a lot of energy. They know how to bring their own energy, the different skills of scorers in general. They're just going to bring so much firepower and different pieces of our offense that we've been missing the past little while. So them coming back is going to be big.”
Drives have been down, perimeter play has been far too frequent in the half-court, and Donovan Mitchell and Evan Mobley have had way too much on their plates to start the year off. It's made the wine-and-gold offense unrecognizable.
Luckily, all of these areas can be remedied with Garland's presence.
“I think the De’Andre [Hunter]'s of the world, the Dean [Wade]'s of the world, they're just going to get easier shots. Our shot quality is decent in our threes right now, but it can be better. He'll help that get better.”
