The Cleveland Cavaliers advanced to Eastern Conference semi-finals after defeating the Boston Celtics, 101-93, in yesterday’s Game 4 of their first-round series. But while LeBron’s bunch easily swept their overmatched opponents, they may have suffered their biggest loss of the season in the process. Cleveland will most likely be without Kevin Love for at least a few weeks after the power forward dislocated his shoulder during Sunday’s game.
The injury happened in the first quarter when Boston center Kelly Olynyk pulled at Love’s arm while both players were racing for the ball. Immediately after the contact, Love ran back to the locker room. The serious, and painful, nature of the injury soon became apparent as replays clearly showed Love’s arm popping out of its socket during the incident.
There’s no way to defend Olynyk’s ill-advised arm pull. It was very clearly “not a basketball play,” as Love said after he game. Although Love’s accusation that Olynyk was intentionally attempting to injure him seems highly debatable, it’s understandable, considering the heated emotional atmosphere of a post-season game, that he and his teammates reacted as if it were.
It was one of those sports injuries that was exactly as bad as it looked. It was immediately clear to the Cavs that they would be without one of their most important players for a significant amount of time, potentially the rest of the playoffs. This would be a huge blow for any team but it would be especially tough on the Cavaliers, a ‘win-now’ team that could lose Love to free agency in the offseason.
Given the stakes, it should have been obvious to all invested viewers, most particularly the officials paid to keep track of such things, that the Cavaliers could be looking for their chance at retaliation. When they built a 51-32 lead over the Celtics near the end of the second quarter, the Cavaliers brought in little-used backup center Kendrick Perkins to essentially play the same role as an enforcer in hockey.
Perkins pushed Boston’s Jae Crowder to the floor, provoking a confrontation that led officials to call a technical foul on both players. Although it was likely that Cleveland brought Perkins in for retaliatory purposes, the officials handed him a flagrant one, which allowed Perkins to remain in the game.
The officials’ inability, or unwillingness, to take control of the game eventually came back to hurt both teams. At the start of the 3rd quarter, Cleveland’s JR Smith, exactly the kind of player to take advantage of this kind of situation, also went after Crowder. Smith sucker-punched Crowder, who hit the ground hard, hurting his left knee.
This was when the officials finally decided to eject a player, calling Smith for a flagrant two. By this time it was too late, Crowder suffered a possible knee sprain and never re-entered the game. Meanwhile, Smith is now likely facing a suspension by the league.
The injuries and confrontations overshadowed the game itself, which ended up being a microcosm of the entire series. The Celtics put up a valiant but ultimately futile effort against their more talented opponents, cutting a significant Cavaliers lead down to single digits, but the Cavaliers survived the scare and ended up winning by a score that didn’t quite do justice to how competitive the game actually was.
The Cavaliers’ postseason prospects, however, now seem considerably less certain than they did before things got out of hand in Game 4. If Love is out for at least two weeks with a dislocated shoulder, as reports suggest, that will leave them without their third best player for their second-round series. The opponent would, barring a Milwaukee Bucks comeback, most likely be the resurgent Chicago Bulls, who would improbably be the healthier team of the two now that Derrick Rose is playing like his old self. The Cavaliers could also be without Smith for the first game, or the first two games, of that series, if league rules against him, although obviously that wouldn’t be as big of a loss.
These developments couldn’t have come at a worse time for Cleveland or for Love himself. Love’s first season with the club after forcing his way out of the Minnesota Timberwolves has been a rocky one. He hasn’t adjusted from being the main guy in Minnesota to being the third wheel behind LeBron James and Kyrie Irving in the Cavaliers’ pecking order. His mediocre performance has also contributed to nonstop media speculation about his personal relationship with James, coverage which makes the NBA resemble a middle school lunchroom more than a top-flight professional sports league.
The post-season was supposed to be Love’s opportunity to salvage his disappointing regular season. The Cavaliers needed him to become what Chris Bosh was for James’s Miami Heat teams during their successful postseason runs: the key supporting player that transformed a great team into a championship-caliber one.
Now, thanks to this untimely injury and his upcoming free agent status, that looks unlikely to happen. In fact, depending on the nature of his injury and how the Cavaliers fare in the next round of the playoffs, there’s even a chance that he has already played his final game for Cleveland.
