Irving hopes Tuesday's game last he'll miss
PHOENIX — Cleveland Cavaliers point guard Kyrie Irving will return to the lineup Monday to face the Suns and then not play the second night of Cleveland’s back-to-back Tuesday in Denver in what he says he hopes will be the last time he sits out all season.
“Ending this year not playing in the back-to-backs, it works for me as long as it’s on the positive track for whatever is best for my health and going into the New Year as healthy as I can be,” Irving said, acknowledging Saturday’s blowout loss to Portland in which he didn’t dress.
“I’m playing tonight. I’m going to do the same thing getting ready for the game mentally and physically and then sit out in Denver again. So, that will be the last time I sit out in back-to-backs and the last two games, hopefully, I’ll miss for the rest of the season.”
Irving is averaging 10 points on 29.4 percent shooting, 3.3 assists, 1.7 rebounds and 1.0 steals in 20.7 minutes in the three games he’s played since his comeback from knee surgery in June.
The fifth-year guard remains on a playing time restriction, however Cavs coach David Blatt said Irving’s minutes could go up against Phoenix from the 26-minute ceiling he’s been reduced to during his comeback so far.
“He’ll play as a starter, but you can’t necessarily play him the number of minutes where I’m sure he’ll eventually get to,” Blatt said Monday morning before his team’s shootaround in preparation for the Suns. “We can look to increase a little bit.”
Irving said he had a mental breakthrough during the Cavs’ 89-83 Christmas Day loss to the Golden State Warriors.
“I think I was being very tedious when I was coming back against Philly and New York. And then Golden State was like our first high-level game where it was just the atmosphere, the playoff atmosphere, going against the champs,” Irving said.
“And then in the second half I was just like, ‘You know what? Let’s just go out and play, man. All this thinking and what you’re doing, you’ve been doing it for some sort of a long time. So all that work that you put in, just man, go out and play.’ And then I missed about eight more shots and I was cool with that.”
The missed shots are a product of the rust collected from not playing in an NBA game for nearly 6½ months as his fractured left kneecap healed.
“For me, I just manage it by just being accepting of what’s going on out there and knowing that the hard work that I’m putting in will turn into something,” Irving said. “Soon. Hopefully soon. But my work ethic and what I do on the off days and coming in to get prepared for games now, it won’t change. I’ll have the same mindset.
“For me, it’s just about knocking off that rust and having that confidence to still be able to attack the rim and get the shots I want.”
Cleveland, mired in a two-game losing streak that’s coincided with working Irving and Iman Shumpert back into the rotation after both guards missed the first several months of the season, is simply going through growing pains in Irving’s estimations.
“You don’t want to put any excuse on what’s going on here. At the end of the day we’re professionals. We got to figure it out,” Irving said.
“But truth be told, when you put a team together, guys are in and out of the lineup. The rotations are different. We can go small, we can go big. We just got to figure it out. That’s all. And then when we do, hopefully it will translate to what it did last year where we go 32-3 or 31-4 and the league has to be on watch. So, any given day we can beat any team, but we still just have to figure out the nuances of what’s going to make sense for us going forward and [what’s going to] matter later the most.”
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