CLEVELAND — The professional sports tradition of guys looking for a little pop of energy — from legal and illegal substances — has never gone away.
A legal route Matthew Dellavedova has gone — coffee.
His pregame cup or two of joe, and sometimes another at halftime, has been a tradition since before he was with the Cavaliers. But he needed to be taken to the hospital after he cramped up and suffered severe fatigue following Game 3 of the NBA Finals. That was enough, Delly is dumping coffee, he told Dave McMenamin of ESPN.“There will be no coffee tonight,” Dellavedova said after Cavs shootaround Thursday. “It’s not a good thing, probably, for your hydration...
“The Finals’ intensity is probably a little bit different to the regular season,” Dellavedova said. “You just try to lay it out there. So, you’re just pushing yourself.”
That’s a smart move, but is it going to be near enough? When you take your body down to empty like that it takes time to get back up to full. Maybe more than 48 hours. Especially if he’s going to spend part of Game 4 chasing Stephen Curry around while the Warriors run him off screens like vintage Ray Allen.
“I told him I was going to limit his minutes, and he said, no, you’re not,” Cavaliers coach David Blatt said at practice Wednesday. “Look, we’ve got to be realistic and keep our eyes on him and see how he recovers. He emptied the tank last night. Hopefully in the ensuing 48 hours he’s going to be able to catch up and to get back up to par, so to speak, in terms of his body. But he’ll be out there, and we’ll just monitor how he’s doing. I’m not going to come in there with a specific minute restriction, but we’ll definitely be conscious of it.”
If Dellavedova can’t stick with Curry in the usual way, it could be a rough night for him and the Warriors.
