{"id":537880,"date":"2026-01-15T07:50:26","date_gmt":"2026-01-15T07:50:26","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/nba\/537880\/"},"modified":"2026-01-15T07:50:26","modified_gmt":"2026-01-15T07:50:26","slug":"kenny-atkinson-provides-vague-injury-update-for-darius-garland-and-sam-merrill","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/nba\/537880\/","title":{"rendered":"Kenny Atkinson provides vague injury update for Darius Garland and Sam Merrill"},"content":{"rendered":"<p class=\"duet--article--dangerously-set-cms-markup duet--article--standard-paragraph _1nfb3k4i _16w9vov1 _16w9vov0 ls9zuh1\">Head coach Kenny Atkinson didn\u2019t have much of an update on either player when asked about it after the win. He said both would <a href=\"https:\/\/www.youtube.com\/watch?v=7sCu-_GMa-I\" rel=\"nofollow noopener\" target=\"_blank\">probably be \u201cdoubtful\u201d<\/a> for the next game, which is in Philadelphia on Friday.<\/p>\n<p class=\"duet--article--dangerously-set-cms-markup duet--article--standard-paragraph _1nfb3k4i _16w9vov1 _16w9vov0 ls9zuh1\">Garland left the game in the third quarter with a right foot injury that occurred while fighting for a loose ball. The injury is fortunately in the opposite foot of the one that required surgery this past offseason. <a href=\"https:\/\/x.com\/ChrisFedor\/status\/2011632318826627565?s=20\" rel=\"nofollow\">Atkinson mistakenly said<\/a> that Garland\u2019s injury was in the same toe when asked about it postgame. That\u2019s good news.<\/p>\n<p class=\"duet--article--dangerously-set-cms-markup duet--article--standard-paragraph _1nfb3k4i _16w9vov1 _16w9vov0 ls9zuh1\">Still, the severity of Garland\u2019s injury is unknown at this time.<\/p>\n<p class=\"duet--article--dangerously-set-cms-markup duet--article--standard-paragraph _1nfb3k4i _16w9vov1 _16w9vov0 ls9zuh1\">\u201cI don\u2019t think it\u2019s great for next game, but I can\u2019t tell you right now\u2026what this looks like longer term,\u201d <a href=\"https:\/\/www.youtube.com\/watch?v=7sCu-_GMa-I\" rel=\"nofollow noopener\" target=\"_blank\">Atkinson said<\/a>.<\/p>\n<p class=\"duet--article--dangerously-set-cms-markup duet--article--standard-paragraph _1nfb3k4i _16w9vov1 _16w9vov0 ls9zuh1\">Garland is averaging 18 points and 6.9 assists per game with .451\/.360\/.861 shooting splits in 26 outings.<\/p>\n<p class=\"duet--article--dangerously-set-cms-markup duet--article--standard-paragraph _1nfb3k4i _16w9vov1 _16w9vov0 ls9zuh1\">Merrill is having the best season of his career. He\u2019s averaging 13.8 points on .470\/.455\/.882 shooting splits in 24 games this season.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Head coach Kenny Atkinson didn\u2019t have much of an update on either player when asked about it after&hellip;\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":537881,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":"","_share_on_mastodon":"0"},"categories":[3772],"tags":[7,306,148,147,305,193,3846,6],"class_list":{"0":"post-537880","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-cleveland-cavaliers","8":"tag-basketball","9":"tag-cavaliers","10":"tag-cavs-injury-report","11":"tag-cavs-news","12":"tag-cleveland","13":"tag-cleveland-cavaliers","14":"tag-clevelandcavaliers","15":"tag-nba"},"share_on_mastodon":{"url":"https:\/\/channels.im\/@nba\/115898025493914401","error":""},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/nba\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/537880","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/nba\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/nba\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/nba\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/nba\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=537880"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/nba\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/537880\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/nba\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/537881"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/nba\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=537880"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/nba\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=537880"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/nba\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=537880"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}