Cavs’ Larry Drew is right in praising Ante Zizic for his progression
By Dan Gilinsky
The Cleveland Cavaliers should be happy with where young big Ante Zizic is in his development, and head coach Larry Drew stressed that recently.
This season, Ante Zizic has played pretty well for the Cleveland Cavaliers. With the team quickly shifting to a rebuilding approach thanks to unfortunate circumstances and all sorts of injuries, it’s allowed Zizic to play a considerable minutes-share in the frontcourt, and in his second year, he has been consistent when given the opportunities to produce.
In 2018-19, Zizic has averaged 7.6 points on 58.5 percent true shooting and 5.4 rebounds in 18.3 minutes per game, per Basketball Reference. He’s been active in 56 of the Cleveland Cavaliers’ 79 contests thus far, while being a starter in 24 of those appearances (per NBA.com).
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Throughout the year, he’s shown he can be an interior offensive presence off the bench, mainly as a rolling outlet, while providing solid screening on and off the ball (both for perimeter shooters and cutters in those instances), too.
As a rolling scorer, Zizic has placed in the 64th percentile (on a relatively high frequency of 21.2 percent), according to Synergy Sports Technology. Zizic has shown good touch in those play types, as he finishes with both hands near the rim efficiently and has finished through contact fairly well, often while being swarmed by opposing interior defense.
While he does not provide the same athleticism near the rim that Larry Nance Jr. does, Zizic often uses ball fakes to create a bit of room for himself to increase his angle, and that sort of craftiness should allow him to be efficient as a predominantly-interior scorer throughout his career.
He projects as a good bench scoring presence for the near future and has continually displayed his worth to the Cleveland Cavaliers, as our own Robbie DiPaola detailed previously, and it’s really rare when Zizic does not impact the game in some positive ways when he’s given chances, at least in the scoring, screening and rebounding department.