Weakened Cavaliers beaten by Boston

    The already battered Cleveland Cavaliers lost one starter before the game and another during their game in Cleveland against the Boston Celtics yet played the Celtics down to the final seconds before losing 98-92.

Cleveland was led by Ricky Rubio with 28 points and Cedi Osman's 26 in the defeat.

Cleveland fell to 9-6 with the loss and will play Wednesday in Brooklyn against the Nets.

Swashbucklings

1) The season is still early and I noted the improved play of Cedi Osman in another Swashbucklings but here is Osman again with a big game.

10 of 17 from the floor, six of twelve from three-point range, and five assists in thirty-one minutes?

That's more than anyone expected from Osman and this improvement comes from a player that still is only twenty-six.

2) As much as Cedi Osman has surprised, the larger surprise has been Ricky Rubio.

Rubio was brought in to play point guard for the second team behind Darius Garland and give the Cavaliers a player to upgrade a position that the team lacked last season.

Instead, Rubio has started the season as a new man and is often on the floor at the most crucial times of the game, averaging close to fifteen points and six and a half assists a night.

3) Rubio's Achilles heel as a player has often been his shooting with a career shooting percentage of thirty-nine percent and under thirty-three percent from beyond the arc.

Rubio's total shooting percentage is actually down half a percentage point from his career average but his three-point percentage is over six points higher than his career average in his fifteen games in Cleveland.

4) The Cavaliers played without center Jarrett Allen, who had a non-Covid illness that will keep him out of the lineup again on Wednesday against Brooklyn.

Evan Mobley played the pivot in place of Allen and had his problems in missing all eleven shots from the floor and finishing with a single free throw in the points column.

5) And in even worse news, Mobley left the game in the fourth quarter with a sprained elbow that will cost him two to four weeks on the sideline.

Mobley was having arguably the best rookie season in early play and the Cavaliers will miss his athleticism badly.

6) The temporary loss of Jarrett Allen, the loss of Evan Mobley for the next month (hopefully less), and the earlier loss of Collin Sexton to a torn meniscus means that only fifteen games into the season, Cleveland will go into Brooklyn with only two of their five starters able to play.

The Cavaliers fast start may buy them some time before things could completely sink but be ready for some rough waters over the next month.

7) I used the above picture for the best picture of this season's "the City" uniforms for the Cavaliers.

I love the use of the classic Cavalier logo, but just as with the black uniform with the C, I just prefer the logo to not be on the jersey.

8) However, I LOVED the classic court that will be used on the nights that the "City" uniforms will be worn!

Classic logo at center court, not a lot of color and logo/icon overkill and just the type of court that keeps the focus on the game and the players - not making the game harder to follow and distracting,