Cleveland Cavaliers will be tested by injuries during crucial stretch

Plagued by injuries, the Cleveland Cavaliers are about to embark on one of their  most important stretches of the season — all in a tight playoff race.

The Cleveland Cavaliers‘ locker room must resemble health tent from the grizzly war movie Hacksaw Ridge, players sprawled about, battered and bruised.

The team is plagued by injuries, its most recent especially crippling. Rodney Hood left Friday’s game against the Los Angeles Clippers with a strained back. His status is day-to-day, but back injuries can be fickle and unpredictable,

Cedi Osman suffered the more cringeworthy boo-boo. After leaving in the third quarter against Los Angeles , he told ESPN “I tried to run and felt a pop in my groin.”

Ouch! Anyone else feel queasy? Let’s all take a collective deep breath together. As Colonel Sanders said, “that one hurt my marble sack.”

Osman said he played through groin pain earlier in the week against Detroit. Along with Hood, he won’t dress for Cleveland’s next game against the Los Angeles Lakers. Osman will be gone for two weeks with hip flexor strain. 

He’ll be joining Kevin Love and Tristan Thompson in street clothes for the next couple Cavs games. With four regular rotation players out, the Cavs are rail thin heading into an important stretch.

With the Boston Celtics and Toronto Raptors comfortably ahead of everyone else, the next six teams in the Eastern Conference are separated by no more than 3.5 games. We’ve seen LeBron James play the role of underdog before, cozily cruising through March and April before creaming his competition as the lower seed.

This LeBron team, however, feels different. It lacks a discernible co-star. Important pieces are new and the squad is late in the year for developing serious chemistry.

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Cleveland is vulnerable, a candidate to be bounced from the first round.  Even if earning the 1 or 2-seed is out of the question, the Cavs need to play in Cleveland in round one. Traveling to hostile Milwaukee or Philadelphia to compete against young, hungry competition would be a nightmare.

Three of the next four Cavaliers games are extremely winnable. Following the Los Angeles Lakers is a road matchup against the tanking Phoenix Suns. Then the Portland Trail Blazers, a team James is 3-2 against since returning to Cleveland.

What follows is a match against another tanker, the Chicago Bulls, before two crucial games. First, a Monday-night home matchup against the Milwaukee Bucks, a team nipping at the heels of Cleveland in the East. Then the conference’s top squad, the Toronto Raptors, enter Quicken Loans Arena.

There are three should-win games in the upcoming stretch, then a challenging trip to Portland, followed by two contests that will go a long way in determining where the Cavaliers play in the playoffs. It’s a crucial stretch with a tightening window in the standings.

If Osman and Hood are limited, pressure falls on the Cavaliers backcourt. George Hill must shoulder more of the scoring load, even though he’s only averaging 10.5 points per game in a Cavs uniform. Jordan Clarkson should and will need to shoot more. In 11 games with Cleveland, his efficient shooting percentage is a sky high 58.1.

Few are talking about the complete drop-off of J.R. Smith. Despite a healthy season, he’s averaging just 8.4 points per game. That’s near a career low. On a team starved for backcourt scoring, if there was ever a time for Smith to find his shot, it would be now.

More than anything, the Cavaliers just need to play more fundamentally sound basketball. Following an uncomfortable loss to the Clippers, one that left the Cavaliers bruised and questioning why they didn’t aggressively pursue DeAndre Jordan at the trade deadline, head coach Tyronn Lue was harsh.

“It was just a nasty game for us offensively, being bad with the basketball, missing layups,” coach  Lue said to a local Cleveland reporter.

Defensively, the shorthanded Cavs were porous against Los Angeles.  Fans took notice on Twitter.

Things don’t get any easier moving forward. Cleveland is saddled by injuries heading down the stretch and the load on LeBron may be getting the best of him. James has played more than 38 minutes in all but one game this month. His game score against LA was 20.1, his second-lowest since early February.

In the movie Hacksaw Ridge, Andrew Garfield’s character Doss carried injured soldiers from the battlefield before the enemy gets within gun range. He splints and lowers them, one-by-one over a cliff’s edge into the safe hands of his comrades.

Cleveland needs to find its Doss. The Cavs must pinpoint a player ready to put his teammates on his back, carry them to safety. LeBron is trying, but he is a weary captain. Like Doss, it must take a corporal, someone with an inferior, ranking to step forward.

Next: 2017-18 Week 21 NBA Power Rankings

The chances of unlikely heroism will be aplenty over the season’s final five weeks. Who will respond to the call to action?