NBA source on Darius Garland playing for Cavs in Game 3: ‘I don’t think he has a choice’

The Cleveland Cavaliers are desperate for a win in their second-round playoff series against the Indiana Pacers to stem the tide.

The Cavs were initially favored to come out on top in the series, yet Cleveland currently finds itself in a 2-0 series hole and is running out of time to figure things out.

With the team in need of a victory to realistically keep its hopes of reaching the Eastern Conference Finals alive — no NBA team has ever dug out of a 3-0 playoff series hole to advance — one NBA source thinks that star guard Darius Garland doesn’t have a choice but to play in Friday’s Game 3.

“There is optimism that all three of the Cleveland Cavaliers’ injured star players, including All-Star guard Darius Garland, who has missed the last four games, will try to play Game 3 Friday against the Indiana Pacers, two league sources told The Athletic,” NBA insider Joe Vardon wrote.

“‘I don’t think he has a choice,’ one league source who is close to the Cavs said of Garland, who hasn’t played since Game 2 of the first round.”

Reportedly, Garland and big man Evan Mobley looked hampered by their respective injuries in a team workout on Thursday, while forward De’Andre Hunter’s thumb injury is on the up and up.

“Trying to play and being able to play effectively are not one and the same,” Vardon wrote. “A league source with knowledge of the Cavs’ workout Thursday said the swelling on Hunter’s injured thumb has subsided, whereas Mobley and Garland were moving as though they’re trying to play through lower leg injuries.”

Garland reportedly “desperately” wants to play for the Cavaliers on Friday, and the same goes for Mobley and Hunter.

“League sources said, and [Kenny] Atkinson confirmed, that all three of the Cavs, Garland included, ‘desperately’ want to play,” Vardon wrote. “Not putting words in the coach’s mouth, because he didn’t say this part, but if the players are hungry to be on the court during these crucial games but are not even in uniform, they may be hurt worse than a ‘questionable’ designation suggests.”

There has been some ambiguity about whether or not Garland’s toe injury is a matter of pain tolerance. Atkinson spoke about the guard’s status on Thursday.

“He’s got to figure it out and I support him 100 percent, whichever way it goes,” Atkinson said of Garland. “He’s probably thinking, ‘I gotta get to a certain point where I can compete at a high intensity, playoff level.’ That’s the hard thing for us…we really can’t simulate that (at practice).”

He continued.

“You have to talk with the trainers, you have to talk to the doctor, and then only you can make the call,” Atkinson said. “That’s kind of where (Garland) is.”

The word on Garland from ESPN’s Brian Windhorst is that he is “truly hurt” after trying to play in the first round and reinjuring himself.

Regardless of the aforementioned trio’s availability for Game 3 or the games ahead, the odds are already very much against the Cavaliers beating the Pacers four times and moving on.

Only five times in the history of the NBA playoffs has a team won a series after dropping the first two games at home. The Los Angeles Clippers were the last team to accomplish such a feat, doing so when they beat the Dallas Mavericks in a playoff series a few years back.

But if there’s any reason to be optimistic about Cleveland’s chances of getting back in this series, it’s that the Cavaliers were a great road team in the regular season. With the Cavs going 30-11 on the road during the regular season, only the Boston Celtics and Oklahoma City Thunder ended the campaign with better records in that department.

It remains to be seen if Garland will be ready to make his return to the lineup on Friday, but his presence adds a layer of lethality to Cleveland’s offensive attack. He scored 20-plus points and dished out six-plus assists per game in the regular season.

With Garland in the lineup or not for Game 3, the Cavaliers will look to carve out a road win on Friday and force at least a Game 5 in this series. That would be a step in the right direction for Cleveland to make an improbable comeback.