Cleveland Cavaliers: Controlled offensive aggression is key on perimeter

The two primary reserve playmakers

I don’t love when Clarkson is dribbling the air out of the ball and taking precious seconds off the shot clock, but he can be a good bad shot-maker, and boy has he been on in recent games.

For as much as Clarkson handles the ball and doesn’t pass to the open man (as he averages just 2.1 assists per game and it feels as though that number should be even less), I’ll have to eventually except that he’s a scorer by nature. That’s fine, and when he does this, I’ll take the Kobe Bryant-like iso mentality at times if that’s in Clarkson’s DNA off the bench, and it makes his trade value keep increasing.

Harrison is not going to be scoring a bunch on the Cavs, and his five points don’t launch out to a casual viewer of this prior Cleveland game, but even with Harrison not being much of a perimeter shooting threat (he’s capable with separation in the mid-range), he’s a solid secondary penetrator in his minutes on the floor, and finds crafty ways to get his teammates easy baskets.

He had five assists and zero turnovers in his 17 minutes, and as a 24-year-old, 6-foot-6 combo guard, I really like Drew getting him some time in meaningful minutes on the rebuilding Cavaliers.

Harrison’s career mark of 4.8 assists per 36 minutes is respectable for a reserve player that is often in constantly-changing lineups, and as the season progresses, his chemistry with Clarkson, Tristan Thompson, Larry Nance Jr. and potentially Osman will only get better with Harrison’s playmaking ability after beating defenders off the bounce.