CAVS SAY LOVE WON’T HAVE SURGERY, LIKELY OUT 8 WEEKS
Kevin Love CLEVELAND — will not have surgery on the broken bone in his left hand and is expected to miss eight weeks, the Cavaliers announced Friday.
Love would not be back until there were two weeks left in the regular season, according to that timetable.
The Cavs said Love would undergo “a non-surgical treatment and rehabilitation process to repair the injury,” following his consultation with team doctors at the Cleve- land Clinic and Dr. Michelle Carlson in New York.
Early Thursday on his Instagram account, Love said he was starting rehab, though his formal prognosis and course of treatment wasn’t announced until Friday.
Love was injured early in the first quarter of a loss to the Detroit Pistons on Tuesday. Jae Crowder started in his place Wednesday in the win over Miami.
Love, an All-Star, will miss All-Star festivities for the second consecutive season because of injury. He’s aver- aging 17.9 points and a teamhigh 9.4 rebounds.
Miami’s Goran Dragic was named Love’s replacement for the All-Star Game Thursday.
Love’s injury culminated an all-around bad month for the Cavs, who went 6-8 in January.
“We joked around about it before the game, just getting out of this month,” Crowder said after Wednesday’s win. “It’s been a tough one for us. In this league, there is going to be ups and downs. We just had a down month.”
LeBron James u nder- achieved last month, just like his teammates. James averaged 23.5 points, his season low for a month and well below his 29.6 in November and 27.5 in December. His averages of 7.3 rebounds and 7.4 assists were also down. His best rebounding month was November (8.7), his best assist average came in December (10.3). Turnovers also remain a problem, although he did cut his average from 4.9 in December to 4.7 in January.
On Tuesday night after Love was injured, Cavs play- ers said one person couldn’t make up for the loss of Love, that they would have to do it as a group. But that won’t be on the February agenda for James.
“No, I just do me,” James said. “My job doesn’t change no matter who’s in or out of the lineup.”
Whether James will be more engaged in February, it has been a winning month since he rejoined the Cavs. They went 9-2 in 2017 after finishing January 7-8. In 2016, they followed up a 13-3 January with an 8-5 February. In 2015, they notched an 8-3 record after an 11-3 January.
It is easy to pinpoint the Cavs’ goals this month. They need improvement from point guard Isaiah Thomas, still struggling 12 games into his comeback from a torn labrum in his right hip. They also need to ramp up their effort and focus on defense, ranking 28th in the league in defensive efficiency and tied for 26th in opponent fieldgoal percentage (47.4) going into Thursday’s action.
The Cavs stood last in defensive efficiency (points per 100 possessions) going into Wednesday’s games, but held the Heat to 89 points, the first time since Nov. 20 they’d kept a foe under 90.
“Of course, you don’t want to be last in defense,” coach Tyronn Lue said Wednesday. “You have myself and the coaches going through it every day just trying to figure out the best possible thing for this team, what we should do and what we can do. You never want to be last in any statistical category, but we’ve got to continue to play. Forget about where we are now, let’s build going forward for these last (32) games and see if we can get better, striving going into the playoffs.”
The NBA’s defensive player ratings (through Wednesday) show why the Cavs’ team ranking is so poor. Thomas stands 471st out of 493 ranked players, Rose is 470th.
Most of the Cavs reside on the depths of the list. Crowder is 409th, Love 397th, Cedi Osman 391st, J.R. Smith 388th, Jose Calderon 371st, Channing Frye 333rd, James 317th and Tristan Thompson 299th.