Uh-Oh

Brian Windhorst reports that Larry Hughes is getting shots in his foot so that he can play in tonight's game.

Count me as one who's pretty worried about the impact Hughes could have on the game. No doubt his playing through an injury would provide an emotional lift to the team. But, due to the injury, Hughes played pretty miserably in Game 4. Offensively, he hit his first shot off pure adrenaline and then lacked explosiveness and a shooting touch for the rest of the game. He didn't make the Pistons account for his presence at all on offense. Defensively, he did an OK job, but nothing notably better than the job Gibson did. In total, he had an Eric Snow-esque impact on the game: he was good enough on defense, but pretty much torpedoed the Cavs on offense by allowing the Pistons to play 5 on 4 and really take LeBron out of his game.

I really hope that if Larry plays, it's for a very short period of time, and only for that emotional lift. On balance, Gibson is doing well enough defensively and is a huge improvement offensively. Count me as one who'll be really, really frustrated if Hughes comes onto the floor to start the third quarter (see pretty much every Cavs post below.)