{"id":629499,"date":"2026-02-28T02:49:19","date_gmt":"2026-02-28T02:49:19","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/nba\/629499\/"},"modified":"2026-02-28T02:49:19","modified_gmt":"2026-02-28T02:49:19","slug":"cavs-believe-donovan-mitchells-groin-injury-isnt-a-long-term-thing","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/nba\/629499\/","title":{"rendered":"Cavs believe Donovan Mitchell\u2019s groin injury isn\u2019t a \u2018long-term thing\u2019"},"content":{"rendered":"

DETROIT \u2014 The Cleveland Cavaliers<\/a> had arguably their most impressive win of the season on Tuesday against the New York Knicks<\/a>. They followed this up by having two of their best players miss the next pair of games, as James Harden (thumb)<\/a> and Donovan Mitchell (groin) are unavailable for Friday\u2019s matchup against the conference-leading Detroit Pistons<\/a>.<\/p>\n

The team hasn\u2019t released an update on Mitchell\u2019s groin injury, however, head coach Kenny Atkinson doesn\u2019t expect this to be a long-term issue.<\/p>\n

\u201cI hate speculating, I just don\u2019t like to do that,\u201d Atkinson said. \u201cWe don\u2019t love soft tissue injuries. \u2026 The feedback I\u2019m getting is that it\u2019s not a long-term thing, so that\u2019s good. It\u2019s not like, man, it\u2019s going to be four weeks, you know, a month or a month and a half. It\u2019s none of that.\u201d<\/p>\n

Even though it\u2019s not a long-term injury, Atkinson doesn\u2019t quite know when Mitchell is going to be returning to the court. They don\u2019t want to rush him or any of their other injured players back, even though they would like a better opportunity to evaluate the rotations after the drastic changes they\u2019ve made to the roster at the deadline.<\/p>\n

\u201cWe\u2019re not going to rush anybody,\u201d Atkinson said. \u201cThat\u2019s against what I believe in, what Steve [Spiro, Cavs head athletic trainer] believes in. What our organization believes. But you know, you do feel a little sense of urgency.\u201d<\/p>\n

Cleveland\u2019s moves at the deadline were done to give this team a better chance to win a title this year and next. They will need to be healthy in the playoffs to do so, but Mitchell and Harden would ideally like to have more than a handful of games played together before heading into the postseason.<\/p>\n

The Cavs do have a rare four-day break coming up next week. The team will be off from Wednesday to Saturday, which could give everyone time to get rested up and recover for the stretch run.<\/p>\n

Injuries are a part of the game, but they aren\u2019t exactly coming at a convenient time for a team that was starting to play its best basketball of the season. Fortunately for the Cavs, it doesn\u2019t seem like Mitchell will be out for too long.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"DETROIT \u2014 The Cleveland Cavaliers had arguably their most impressive win of the season on Tuesday against the…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":629500,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[3],"tags":[7,148,6],"class_list":{"0":"post-629499","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-nba","8":"tag-basketball","9":"tag-cavs-injury-report","10":"tag-nba"},"share_on_mastodon":{"url":"https:\/\/channels.im\/@nba\/116145984622338606","error":""},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/nba\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/629499","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=629499"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/nba\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/629499\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/nba\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/629500"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/nba\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=629499"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/nba\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=629499"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/nba\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=629499"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}