Cavs: Why Collin Sexton should make NBA All-Rookie First Team

After an up-and-down start to Cleveland Cavaliers rookie Collin Sexton’s career, a second-half explosion for the “Young Bull” has him in some rare rookie company and he is strengthening his case to make the All-Rookie First Team.

Collin Sexton‘s first seven games saw the Cleveland Cavaliers rookie score 12.0 points per game while shooting just 14.3 percent from three-point land, per NBA.com. But, the poor long range shooting did not come as much of a surprise due to the fact Sexton was not known as a three-point shooter coming into year one.

However, as the rookie started seeing more playing time and getting familiar with his teammates those numbers began to improve. The month of November saw him average 16.1 points and hit an impressive 48.1 percent from deep (per NBA.com).

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Pre-All-Star break, Sexton was averaging 15.1 points a night on 48.9 percent true shooting, and hitting 39.2 percent of his shots from beyond the arc. Despite these impressive overall scoring stats, Sexton was left off the Rising Stars team during All-Star weekend, something that he would reportedly use as motivation moving forward.

What was nice to see from the young guard was the fact that he did not hang his head, and in the games immediately following his snub Sexton averaged 21.1 points on 42.4 percent from 3-point range and even averaged 3.5 assists (again, per NBA.com).

So while Sexton reportedly took the Rising Stars slight personally, he chose to use it to better himself. That is quite a good sign from a young lottery pick.

Now what has really opened up the eyes of many around the league is what Sexton has been able to do thus far since the All-Star break. With encouragement and constant advice from the coaching staff and his fellow Cleveland Cavaliers’ teammates, Sexton is shooting the ball with a renewed sense of confidence.

Sexton is also using that confident shooting ability to force the defense to guard him higher on the perimeter, where he then uses his exceptional speed to go around his defenders and finish strong at the rim more easily than earlier in the year.

That is why Sexton developing a consistent outside shot makes him such a dangerous offensive player. The defense cannot pack the paint when he has the ball, as Sexton can hit the wide-open shot, off ball swings in particular, or make the defense pay for coming out to guard him.

In the Cavaliers 19 games post-All-Star break, Sexton is scoring 20.9 points per game on 60.0 true shooting, and is shooting an impressive 43.5 percent from long range on a healthy 5.7 attempts per outing.

This scoring increase from Sexton has led the rookie to take over the league lead in double figure scoring games among rookies, which is a mark of 68 games now, per Cleveland.com’s Chris Fedor.

Sexton also made more history as you can see from the tweet below (h/t Cavs Official Notes, and according to Elias Sports Bureau).

The Cleveland Cavaliers’ social media team did some serious digging this past week and uncovered quite a unique set of stats, but impressive nonetheless.

The “Young Bull” is one of only three rookies all-time to reach 2,000 minutes, shoot 40 percent from beyond the arc and average 16.3 points (yes that’s an oddly specific number of points, but is notable, anyhow).

Who are the other two rookies to accomplish this feat besides Sexton? You may have heard of them; those two other rooks were Larry Bird and Stephen Curry.

Yeah, that is some pretty elite company that Sexton finds himself a part of as a rookie.

However, one thing Sexton will need to do to take his game to the next level is to improve his work on the defensive side of the ball, as Sexton ranks 479th out of 502 among all NBA players in defensive win shares, according to NBA.com.

But the poor defense, especially when guarding pick-and-roll, for the time being, can (and should) be overlooked when dissecting whether Sexton belongs on the All-Rookie First Team.

After all, the Cavs’ league-worst defensive rating and lackluster personnel around Sexton for much of the season has done nothing to help him there.

In addition, he’s been tasked with having a huge offensive workload for a rookie, and that’s been with Kevin Love, the team’s best player, only active in 21 of the squad’s 77 games this season (per Basketball Reference).

Plus, when you consider that, per The Athletic’s Joe Vardon (subscription required) “a player’s position on the court is not taken into account,” when naming the teams, Sexton should clearly get the first squad nod.

Many were quick to write Sexton off after a rocky start to his professional career, but the rookie has persevered and turned into a stellar offensive weapon for the Cavaliers, and given his tireless work ethic, there will assuredly be an improvement on the defensive end as well.

The Young Bull could just be the piece this franchise needed to jump-start their rebuild, but only time will tell.

San Antonio Spurs legendary head coach Gregg Popovich also appeared to give Sexton his props recently in the Cavs’ six-point loss to them, (per DefPen’s Chris Montano and h/t Cavaliers Nation’s Abhinav Seetharaman). That shouldn’t exactly hurt Sexton’s NBA All-Rookie First Team case.