The Cleveland Cavaliers made it to the NBA Finals last season but lost to the Golden State Warriors. It's not often that you can say a team that made the finals had a disappointing year, but that argument can be made for the Cavaliers.
One of the big issues for Cleveland last season was its lack of depth at the point guard position. Kyrie Irving is a star, but when he went down in game one of the finals last season they were forced to play Matthew Dellavedova big minutes, and they didn't want to be put in that situation again this year. As a way of preventing that the Cavs signed old friend Mo Williams to be their backup point guard, but his season hasn't gone nearly as well as he had hoped.
For the most part this season Williams has been out of the rotation in favor of Dellavedova. Williams began the year as the starting point guard while Irving recovered from his knee injury, but since he came back Williams has seen his role basically disappear.
One of the first things Tyronn Lue said he wanted to do when he was named the new head coach was get Mo Williams more involved, but that has not happened. The Cavaliers love the way Dellavedova has played for them, and that has directly affected Williams' playing time this season. So too has a knee injury that the 33-year-old point guard has been playing through.
Williams has only appeared in 39 games this year, so it is hard to tell when exactly he was out because of his knee or when he was out just because he was out of the rotation. Over the last five games, though, Williams has appeared in four of them despite the fact that his knee is still bothering him. The 13th-year man out of Alabama said that he thinks he might deal with this knee injury for the rest of his career.
Despite the fact that Williams believes this knee injury will continue to linger, he doesn't plan to retire after this season. Williams says the knee has been bothering him for the last couple of years, but he is learning to maintain it so that he could continue to play.
It is unclear if Williams will be part of the Cavs' rotation come playoff time, but it seems likely that he won't be. Irving is currently dealing with an ankle injury which would have an effect on Williams' minutes, but the Cavaliers don't think that injury is too serious. Williams' averages of 8.6 points and 2.6 assists per game are his lowest since his rookie year way back in 2003.
