Cavaliers Notes: Mitchell, Love, Rubio, Garland

Cavaliers star Donovan Mitchell won’t be available for an inter-conference showdown in Memphis on Wednesday night, having been officially ruled out due to a left groin strain, per an Associated Press report.

Mitchell suffered the injury during the third quarter of Cleveland’s win over New Orleans on Monday and was held out of practice on Tuesday. He was originally listed as doubtful for Wednesday’s game vs. the Grizzlies before being downgraded to out.

It remains to be seen whether Mitchell will have to miss more time beyond tonight’s contest. The Cavs have a challenging back-to-back set on tap for this weekend, as they’ll host Golden State on Friday and Milwaukee on Saturday.

Here’s more on the Cavs:

• Cavaliers forward Kevin Love continues to be affected by a hairline fracture in his right thumb, as Chris Fedor of Cleveland.com details. At the time Love sustained the injury, on November 18, he had made 40.9% of his three-point attempts on the season. Since then, he has knocked down just 29.5%. “Still doesn’t feel right,” Love said on Monday after making just 1-of-7 shots from the field, including 0-of-4 threes.
• Cavaliers head coach J.B. Bickerstaff said prior to Monday’s game that Ricky Rubio‘s minutes restriction would be bumped up to about 15 minutes as the team continues to monitor his return from a year-long ACL-related absence, tweets Kelsey Russo of The Athletic. Rubio, who played 10 minutes in his first game back and 13 in his second appearance, ended up logging 17 minutes on Monday.
• The Cavs like what they’ve seen this season from Darius Garland, who has adjusted nicely to sharing the backcourt with Mitchell and continues to grow as a team leader, Russo writes in a full story for The Athletic. “He’s still young — more years ahead of him than he has behind him,” Caris LeVert said of his teammate. “But I think he’s done a great job of feeling it out and not being afraid to put his voice out there, not being afraid to make mistakes even with communication. I think for us to just hear his voice is huge because, obviously, we all respect his game. So just for us to hear his voice is huge.”