Holiday Happenings and the Road to Recovery

Hey, everyone! It’s Donyell, checking in from Cleveland. The Cavaliers are starting to get healthy again and hopefully I’ll be coming back soon, myself. I see the doctor next week and we’ll go from there. I’m looking forward to being back out there with the guys.

I’m still able to contribute to the team and the community even though I can’t suit up yet. On Wednesday night, I took 30 kids from the Broadway Boys and Girls Club out to Target for a little shopping spree. It’s the second straight year I’ve done it and it really means a lot to me.

You see that people can’t afford things and I look back on last year – I gave kids a gift card and watched them shop. I asked a couple of them what they’re going to get for themselves. And a lot of them don’t get anything for themselves; they bought stuff for their family members. They get things they know their parents wanted.

Last year, the kids got $150 and – this one girl – you could tell she was looking at inserts in the paper because she walked out of there with a shopping cart full of stuff. Then other kids just walk out with an iPod. And that’s great; that’s what this is for. But it’s just good to see the smiles on people’s faces and you’re able to make a person’s day.

I look at my kids’ situations and they can walk into a Wal-Mart and pretty much walk out with what they want to walk out with. And some of these kids are happy to go home with a miniature remote-controlled car. It’s things like that – seeing kids happy for the holidays – which make it all worthwhile.

As to how I’m able to contribute to the team, like I said in my last entry, I can still help out other players because being on the bench with an injury gives you a different perspective on the team.

When you’re a player – even when you’re sitting on the bench – you still tend to wait on getting in the game, waiting for the coach to call your name. Now, I know I’m not going to get called so I’m watching the game for guys setting screens, guys rotating on defense, plays being run right or wrong. And I’m able to talk to guys when they come out of the game.

There are times where a player gets pulled out of the game and they’re not too happy with Coach – and don’t want to listen to the Coach. I’m able to go talk to that person and tell them what they’re doing right or wrong, and they listen because they know it’s coming from a player. They’ll just listen to you more. Sometimes, I’ll yell at guys for not shooting the ball, especially when they’re wide open. I tell them: ‘You complain about not getting shots and you’re getting the shot and passing it up.’

It’s actually a good experience. And if you look at the guys who aren’t playing a lot – if you watch me on the bench – there are times where I’m serious and times when I’m joking around. I’m probably joking around with guys who aren’t playing a lot just to keep the smile on their face, so they don’t get frustrated. I learned that just from my own experiences, going through the last two years – sometimes playing a lot, sometimes not playing a lot.

So now I’m just trying to keep the other guys motivated throughout the game.

Like I said, it feels great now that the team is getting healthier and things starting to take shape. It’s kind of like LeBron said the other night, you don’t want to talk too much, but there were a lot of people talking trash about us at the beginning of the year that without Andy, without Sasha that we’d be about 4-15 right now.

Obviously, we’re 10-12. We had a good winning streak before LeBron got hurt. Then we lost some games in there. But now Andy’s back, Sasha’s back, LeBron and Larry are back healthy. We have to get Boobie and myself healthy, but I think once we get our full team back, people are going to see.

I think what’s helped us out is that we’re 10-12 after going through maybe the toughest part of our season. We’ve done China, we’ve done the West Coast. I think I saw an article that said since we left for China, we haven’t been in Cleveland for longer than 72 hours straight. That’s a rough stretch – the first two months of the season, including Camp and you haven’t been home for three days at a time.

So to be 10-12 right now with everyone coming back healthy, it only helps us out in the long run.