“Where was Larry Hughes? He didn’t play at all in the fourth (22 minutes total), which subjected us to watching Damon Jones trying to handle the ball and meant Gibson was getting Hughes’ minutes.”
That’s what we wrote in today’s Smack after Game 3. Turns out Larry was on the bench for a reason: he suffered a foot injury during the first half, which turns out was a torn plantar fascia. Hughes told reporters the chances of him playing in Game 4 were “slim.”
Can the Cavs win without him? Mike Brown has experimented with a Damon Jones/Daniel Gibson backcourt before; when those two are on the court, what the Cavs lose with Hughes’ defense and ability to play point guard, they gain with DJ and Gibson’s shooting (if they’re hot). And the way Gibson played in Game 3 — scoring 9 points and coming up with some big shots and one big offensive rebound — we’re not counting out a Cleveland win despite Larry’s absence. Two things will have to happen, though: Gibson can’t let Chauncey Billups beast him the way he did in the latter stages of Game 3 (or Brown has to come up with a way to protect Gibson on D), and LeBron will probably have to become the primary ball-handler/distributor. Just one more thing on King James’ plate to worry about.
May 28th, 2007 at 5:35 pm
Dank says:
how exactly did Chauncey Billups “beast” the cavs and more specifically the kid Gibson when he only dropped 13 points? shouldnt it be the other way around that this kid gibson beasted the pistons? 9 points is more than expected from a kid like him. he did a great job. billups didnt do anything special.
May 28th, 2007 at 7:04 pm
Austin Burton says:
Did you see what Billups started doing to Gibson when there was 2 minutes left? He took him to the rack once, hit that crazy fadeaway, and on Detroit’s last shot, got deep into the lane before kicking it out to Prince. Billups didn’t play a good game all the way through, but when he wanted to, he took Gibson where he wanted to go.
May 28th, 2007 at 7:53 pm
Celts34 says:
Sounds like LeBron would prefer to have Gibson on the court. In the live post-game interview, LeBron’s comments made it sound like Gibson’s his guy. He said “I need him out there with me.” To me that sounds like he’d rather have Gibson beside him than Hughes.
May 29th, 2007 at 1:50 am
nick says:
I think its more that he needs his help knowing that hughes was hurt and is better then the other two guys(snow and jones) on offense.