{"id":679306,"date":"2026-03-26T01:39:18","date_gmt":"2026-03-26T01:39:18","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/nba\/679306\/"},"modified":"2026-03-26T01:39:18","modified_gmt":"2026-03-26T01:39:18","slug":"cavs-starter-injured-ankle-in-warmups-before-matchup-against-heat","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/nba\/679306\/","title":{"rendered":"Cavs starter injured ankle in warmups before matchup against Heat"},"content":{"rendered":"

The Cleveland Cavaliers<\/a> have had a tough time keeping their ideal starting lineup on the floor. We\u2019re not sure if Dean Wade is in their preferred playoff starting lineup, but he has been a starter for most of the season. Unfortunately, the Cavs could be without him for a few games as he went down with an injury during his on-court workout before Wednesday\u2019s game.<\/p>\n

According to Chris Fedor of cleveland.com, Wade seemed to hurt his ankle while warming up for Cleveland\u2019s matchup with the Miami Heat. He landed on a ball boy\u2019s foot after finishing a lay up.<\/p>\n

We don\u2019t know the extent of the injury at this time, but we won\u2019t see him for Wednesday\u2019s game against the Heat, as the team has officially ruled him out of this game.<\/p>\n

Wade has started 36 of the 57 games he\u2019s played this season. He\u2019s averaged 5.8 points on .432\/.354\/.711 shooting splits with 4.2 rebounds and 1.5 assists per game.<\/p>\n

The Cavs have played some of their best basketball with Wade this season. Cleveland has been 3.1 points<\/a> per 100 possessions better with Wade on the court compared to when he\u2019s off. That\u2019s been most relevant on the defensive end, where they\u2019ve given up 1.8 fewer points<\/a> per 100 possessions with him on.<\/p>\n

Head coach Kenny Atkinson has been using the last portion of the year to experiment with lineups. We\u2019ve seen that some with Wade\u2019s insertion in the starting lineup, and how they\u2019ve tried to use Wade at the five in lineups alongside James Harden. Groups with Wade at center and Harden on the floor have outscored opponents by 18.4 points<\/a> per 100 possessions (99th percentile<\/a>) with a 131.6 offensive rating<\/a> (100th percentile<\/a>) in just 76 possessions.<\/p>\n

Losing Wade for an extended period of time would be detrimental. But it\u2019s frustrating even if it\u2019s just a short-term issue given how little time the Cavs have had their full compliment of players with the playoffs just around the corner.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"The Cleveland Cavaliers have had a tough time keeping their ideal starting lineup on the floor. We\u2019re not…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":679307,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[3772],"tags":[7,306,148,147,305,193,3846,6],"class_list":{"0":"post-679306","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\/116292928838943670","error":""},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/nba\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/679306","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=679306"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/nba\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/679306\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/nba\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/679307"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/nba\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=679306"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/nba\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=679306"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/nba\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=679306"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}