Darius Garland returned to the Cleveland Cavaliers’ starting lineup on Wednesday and played like he was never gone. However, while he was phenomenal, he admitted his road back wasn’t easy and full of fears.
To recall, Garland suffered a nasty left eye injury during their season opener against the Toronto Raptors after Gary Trent Jr. poked him in the eye. Midway through the second quarter of the said contest, Trent tried to steal the ball from Garland off an inbound pass, but instead of getting his hands on the ball, he accidentally hit the left eye of the Cavs star.
Garland went down in pain for minutes before he was taken out for the rest of the night. He went on to miss the next five games for the Cavs before his return against the Celtics. Nonetheless, the All-Star guard shared that he had fears of missing more time–perhaps months–because of how bad the injury was, per Spencer Davies of Basketball News.
Fortunately, Darius Garland needed just a couple of weeks to heal. He also shared that Trent reached out to him after the accident to apologize, adding that he didn’t mean to harm the scoring guard.
Sure enough, it looks like Cavs fans have nothing to worry about Garland. He was his usual electrifying self against the Celtics, dropping 29 points and 12 assists to lead the team to the 114-113 win and an epic 6-1 start to the campaign.
