Collin Sexton- A-Minus
Collin Sexton showed growth in every single facet of his game, both from last season, and as this season progressed.
In terms of stats, Sexton increased his PER from 12 to 16.3, his True Shooting % went up 4% from 52% to 56%, Total Rebounds were up slightly, Steals doubled from 0.6 to 1.1. Perhaps most importantly, he averaged a full free throw per game more in his sophomore campaign, and he bumped his already excellent free-throw shooting up to almost 85%.
He still doesn’t have ideal size, especially in the 2-guard spot, but he’s not under-sized like an Isaiah Thomas, and he is absolutely a bull in the paint. His size hurts him more on defense, but the defense behind him and beside him hurts him even worse. He needs to maintain his aggression and effort on defense, and the team needs to improve around him.
There has been a lot of chatter about his ideal role being an off-the-bench spark-plug,1 and that might be one day. Today isn’t that day, and tomorrow won’t be, either. By my rankings, he slots in as the 14th or 15th best shooting guard in the league- as a second year player! When you compare him to people just in front of him, like Jaylen Brown, DeMar DeRozan, Jrue Holiday, etc, he’s at the same level of development as these guys were in year 3, 4, or 5.
Key to improving for 2021 is going to be developing consistency, working on his defense, and increasing his offensive aggressiveness. This doesn’t mean shooting more- it means being more decisive when the ball hits his hands. He needs be ready to attack with a drive, pass or shot within 3 seconds of catching it. Don’t give defenses the time to gird their loins.
Darius Garland- C
Darius was a bit of an enigma this year. He seems like a really good kid, and he’s clearly talented with the basketball.2
Unfortunately, I think there were some things stacked against him having a breakout rookie year: He’s undersized, like Sexton, but he doesn’t have that extra 15 pounds of muscle Collin brings to the table. Part of that has to do with the fact that he still won’t be able to legally buy alcohol when next season starts. He was coming off of a significant knee injury, and because of the timing of that injury, Darius only had five more games of college basketball than LeBron James did before his debut.
On the court, young point guards are traditionally not very good. It is just too much for a guy that young to take in, especially at the number of minutes he was playing against grown-ass men in the NBA. Then, you add in our organizational instability, shifting coaches and making big roster moves around him on the fly during the season, and you have the recipe for an underwhelming rookie campaign.
I’m really excited to see Garland in year two. He will be fully healthy, he’ll have had a year with professional strength-and-conditioning coaches, and he’ll hopefully have a full training camp and a full season in one offensive system. I saw the game begin to slow down for him in the second half, and he started making better, sharper reads off of pick-and-roll and drives. He’s also good for 88% from the charity stripe, so if he can regain some explosiveness, he’s going to get easy points that will open up the passing lanes.
His keys to the upcoming season are simple: Health and aggression. I hope he’s healthy and adds a little bulk to his frame, and I hope he gets more aggressive as a shooter. Similar to Collin, that doesn’t mean shoot more, but it means “shoot decisively”. Catch the ball and let it rip.
Kevin Porter Jr- B-Plus
The single most common Cavs-related phrase out of my mouth last year: “Kevin Porter Jr was the steal of the draft!”. I have no reason to stop believing that.
Porter has a real-deal NBA body with great athleticism, and there is nothing mechanical in his shot that should prevent him from improving from range as he puts in work.
The biggest challenge going forward is going to be the coaching staff finding the ‘right’ minutes for him. He’s listed as a small forward, but in 2020 Cavs tradition, he’s under-sized for that slot at 6’4”. In my mind, he’s really a prototypical shooting guard. He moves and shoots like a guard. He is a big reason why I hope we don’t take a guard this year, because I think we already have three guards to rotate through, and he could use another 10 minutes a night to show off his game.
Here’s something that might surprise you: Kevin Porter Jr. is six months younger than draft-mate Darius Garland.
Something that might not surprise you: I think the most important year-two development that KPJ could make is to be more decisive when the ball finds him. This being the third player in a row I’ve written this about, you probably notice the trend. I think part of the issue is that Coach Beilein had the team spend the first half of the season running on the 30-second shot clock from college, and part of it is that our team is hella young in the backcourt.
Andre Drummond- B
Even though he only played 8 games with us, please do not think that I forgot about ‘Dre. He’s in a bad place in terms of how the NBA values traditional centers, but I think that’s a problem for a Finals contender, not the 2020 Cavs.
In terms of ‘win-now’ contributions, he is the best player on the team, and it’s not really close. That we essentially got him for a half a ham sandwich and a warm Coke is even better.
Even though the League has been trending away from traditional ‘big man’ centers, I think that Drummond can help us beat up on a lot of the stretch 5’s we’ll see. This dude is a whole-ass man. If he can build a good rhythm with our young backcourt, we could very realistically ride him into an 8-seed next season.
If he’s working on anything this off-season, I hope it’s building a focus on winning, team-oriented basketball. He’s historically had solid-to-great numbers guy, but that has not generally translated into wins. I don’t think this is fate, but he definitely needs to commit to a level of effort and accountability that might not have been demanded of him very often in Detroit.
Cedi Osman- C
One of my favorite players coming in to this season, Cedi Osman experienced a regression that I did not expect. His points, rebounds, free throw attempts and FT% all went down significantly, despite his minutes and usage rate slipping only a tiny bit.
Unless he comes back having made serious additions to his game in this extended offseason, I think that his role will continue to shrink, even if we don’t pick up Deni Avdija in the draft. If we do, he will find himself as the fourth or fifth guy off the bench on a fringe playoff team.
The one positive that I’d point out is that he boosted his shooting from deep up to 38% this season. While no one is going to mistake him for Mark Price any time soon, if he can dial in that shot and work on his defense, he could be a very valuable guy off the bench.
Kevin Love- C-Minus
Disclaimer: I think Kevin Love is legitimately one of the best dudes in the NBA, and if he wanted to kiss my daughter after she’s born in a couple months, I would hold her up like I was on Pride Rock.
No one suffered from what I perceive as a management-induced team-wide lack of direction this past season more than Kevin Love. He should have been the clear number one option on offense, and we should have played through him on 80%+ of the possessions he was on the court for.
Instead, for most of the season, we seemed to run the offense like Garland was year-five Kyrie Irving and Collin Sexton was LeBron James. Love played like he was at home being the #3 option on this team.
I understand that we want to develop a potentially dynamic young backcourt, but the reality is, that development should have focused on how to play with teammates that are better than you.
That’s the darker turn in this evaluation: Is Kevin Love better than Collin Sexton in 2020? In terms of advanced metrics, he is the tiniest bit more efficient, and his rebounding pushes his PER a point ahead. In terms of the eye test, Sexton just wants it more. Love, for large stretches of the season, just seemed happy to be getting some run in on a Tuesday night.
It is my hope that we’re more competitive next year, and that that will trigger Love’s competitive drive. He could be the key to us fighting for a playoff spot next year. If he is not more aggressive, or if we don’t let him be, we really need to give much more of that time to Nance Jr.
Larry Nance Jr.- B-Plus
This was a solid campaign for Larry, all things considered. His defense was down a bit, but it’s difficult to tell if that was him, or if that was the team getting worse around him defensively.
Would it shock you to know that Nance and Kevin Love had the same defensive rating last year?
What should shock you is that Nance was only decimal points behind Love in PER, and was almost 10 points better in offensive rating. He also shot 35% from three, only 2% lower than Love. Where this comparison gets harsh: Love is six years older, and makes 1200% more money.
Nance does not have the talent or pedigree Kevin Love has, but he’s a grinder. If he improves even a little bit from last year to next, he could could supplant Love in the starting lineup. Ideally, we use him as the first guy off the bench for both Love and Drummond, and he keeps pushing both of them. At the end of the day, we’re paying our starting front court almost $60,000,000 next season, and we should be getting All-Star performances.3
Dean Wade- Incomplete
I got to see Dean Wade play one game in Canton, and I’ve watched tape on him from Kansas State.
If he can hold up on the defensive end, he could be a core component next year. We have not had that absolute quick-scope sniper in the lineup, and he shot 42% from downtown in college, many of those shots coming from NBA depth.
He’s 6’9” with a high release, he’s good at setting after the screen for the catch-and-release, and he’s got a nice little turn-around game with that height in the 12-15 foot range.
The thing that will surprise people next year is that dude can get up pretty good. The threat of his shot magnifies his speed, so you’re going to see him giving people that pump-fake and then dunking on peoples’ faces. This is a good clip of what he can bring to the table. He’s even got a bit of a left hand in the lane. There’s no reason he can’t be a big Joe Harris next year.
Dylan Windler- Incomplete
He gets the classic “Incomplete”. My hope is that without a coach trying to run him into the ground in Summer League, we might get to see him shoot the rock this year. I liked him at the Wine & Gold rookie event, but I’d much rather see him in warmups.
BJ Bickerstaff- B-Plus
Coach is a bit below average after 227 career games at the helm. That’s a little bit deceptive, though, because it’s not like he’s been coaching the ‘96 Bulls.
My hope is that he’ll get a full year to really show what he can do. The players really seemed to double-down for him when he took over, and they played at a higher gear for those games.
My hope is that he can start to mold them on the defensive side of the ball, and that, on offense, he emphasizes sharing the ball, pushing tempo when it’s smart, and getting into the offense early in the shot clock. If they get one 24-second clock violation next year, that’s one too many.
I want to see them move the ball and take their open shots. We have several lineups we can run out were literally everyone on the team is a plus-shooter from deep, and the math, last I checked, says three is still more than two.
Moondog- A-Plus
Moondog, to steal a phrase, “You da real MVP!” We have one of the very best mascots in the game. He’d be cool just as he is, but as a throw-back to Cleveland’s rock & roll heritage, he’s that much cooler.
I don’t want to see any improvement from Moondog, but I do expect many pictures with my soon-to-arrive daughter this coming season, even if they’re socially distanced by necessity.
Ahmaad Crump A-Plus-Plus
I watch wayyyyyy too much NBA League Pass. One of the quirks of League Pass is that they pretty often show the stadium feed pre-game and during the promotions4 they do on TV timeouts and whatnot. I’ve heard MC’s from at least 20 teams in the last year…
Hands down, there is no one in the League I would rather have on the mic than Ahmaad Crump. The only thing that remotely compares is the Bulls’ 90’s pregame, and that intro is seared into the memory of every 90’s child that had a remotely decent upbringing.
Thanks!
As always, thanks for reading, and come back on Monday for a much smaller piece about the differences between the Cavs and the bubble teams that are starting scrimmages this week!