Tonight the 7-4 Cleveland Cavaliers take on the 7-3 Washington Wizards. The Cavaliers are coming off a big win against a very good New York Knicks team and are in the middle of a four-game winning streak.
There are many things that must go right in order for the Cavaliers to make if five straight wins tonight. One key thing is Issac Okoro’s play. Okoro is expected to play tonight after missing a few games with a left hamstring injury. Okoro will need to step up big time in order to fill the void from the absents of one of the Cavs’ best scorers, Collin Sexton.
Another key to a Cavaliers win tonight is the play of the big men. Jarrett Allen has recently been named NBA Eastern Conference player of the week. That makes him the first Cav to win that award since Lebron James in 2018. J
arrett Allen and rookie Evan Mobley have been playing very well together and it will take their combined effort to pull off a win tonight. The Cavaliers must be able to control the rebounding game and defend the paint in order to have better odds tonight, and those two things run through Jarrett Allen and Evan Mobley.
Cavaliers and Wizards meet in an Eastern Conference battle
There will be some interesting history between these two franchises tonight as former Cavs fan-favorite Drew Gooden will come to town with the Wizards as a part of their TV analyst team.
“Gooden arrived in Cleveland in the summer of 2004 as part of one of the most meaningful trades in franchise history – traded to the Cavs along with Steven Hunter and an unknown second-rounder named Anderson Varejao in exchange for a Tony Battie and a future second-rounder (that turned out to be Martynas Andriuskevicius). In 292 career contests, the durable for Jayhawk – who started at power forward for the Cavaliers first NBA Finals appearance in 2007 – averaged 11.9 points and 8.6 rebounds,” reports NBA.com.
It will be very interesting to see if the Cavaliers will be able to make it five straight games with a big win over the Wizards tonight. The Cavs will be shorthanded as they are still without Kevin Love and Lauri Markkanen due to the NBA’s health and safety protocols.
They will also be without Collin Sexton as he tore his meniscus in his left knee and is out for the foreseeable future. This one could be rough but there is no quit in this Cavaliers team and they could easily walk away from this game with their fifth straight win to improve to 8-4 on the season.
