TNT Sports’ Jared Greenberg gives update on an injury-riddled Cavaliers team ahead of Game 2 in Cleveland.
CLEVELAND (AP) — Evan Mobley, Darius Garland and De’Andre Hunter were all declared out for the Cleveland Cavaliers in Game 2 of their Eastern Conference semifinal series against the Indiana Pacers on Tuesday night.
Top-seeded Cleveland was already facing adversity after dropping Game 1 to the Pacers 121-112 on Sunday night. The Cavaliers haven’t lost their first two games at home in the playoffs since 1996 against the New York Knicks in the first round.
Mobley, the league’s Defensive Player of the Year, and Hunter were both injured in a 26-second span in the fourth quarter Sunday night.
Mobley sprained his left ankle when he was boxed out by Indiana’s Myles Turner and didn’t have room to land after his turnaround hook shot went in. Mobley is averaging 17 points and 7.2 rebounds in the playoffs.
Hunter, averaging 23.8 minutes off the bench in the postseason, dislocated the thumb on his right shooting hand after Bennedict Mathurin blocked his running dunk attempt.
Dean Wade started in place of Mobley, while Ty Jerome got his first postseason start after Sam Merrill got the call the last three games that Garland was out.
Kenny Atkinson, voted the NBA’s Coach of the Year on Monday night, was still agitated about the non-calls where his players suffered the injuries.
“Even if it’s not malice, we need to see our best players playing in the playoffs,” he said before Tuesday’s game. “This rhetoric going around, people say, ‘Oh man, that’s playoff basketball.’ To me, that’s not. As a stakeholder in this, we need to figure out what is acceptable.”
“Nobody wants to see players here. That disturbs the hell out of us,” Carlisle said about the injuries. “When you turn in a play to the league, they let the other team know. I don’t want to tell you the number of plays we turned in from the Milwaukee series because that was five games.”
