The Cleveland Cavaliers have been pushing forward a three-point-centric philosophy for their team this offseason, and a reported signing of J.P. Macura is the latest to add to that focus.
The Cleveland Cavaliers, as we’ve touched on time and time again here at KJG, weren’t going to be making splash free agent signing this offseason, given their salary cap limitations and the team eventually not wanting to dip over the luxury tax threshold.
Cleveland, despite there being constant trade discussion throughout last season and leading up until realistically the end of June, ended up reportedly waiving J.R. Smith last week, and it was reported previously that the Cavaliers were likely to sign two players to their roster via minimum deal had that be the case, per Cleveland.com’s Chris Fedor (who would later note that Cleveland would likely leave one of their roster spots open going into the 2019-20 season).
Taking that sort of thing into consideration, the Cavaliers signed free agent shooting guard J.P. Macura to a partially-guaranteed contract recently, which was initially reported by Sportando’s Emiliano Carchia (in a report on Wednesday).
It was then reported on Thursday by The Athletic‘s Joe Vardon and Shams Charania (also of Stadium) that the Cleveland Cavaliers and Macura agreed on an Exhibit 10 deal, which is a form of a one-year, minimum salary deal which enables Cleveland to convert Macura’s contract to a two-way deal if they wish, as Sam Amico of Amico Hoops mentioned (Dean Wade currently has the other Cleveland two-way spot).
The Cavs and guard J.P. Macura have agreed on a partially guaranteed (Exhibit 10) contract for next season. Macura played two games with Charlotte as a rookie last year, sources told @ShamsCharania and I. Move brings Cavs’ roster to 14.
— Joe Vardon (@joevardon) July 25, 2019
Macura was playing on a two-way deal last season with the Charlotte Hornets, of which he was almost exclusively playing with their G-League affiliate, the Greensboro Swarm, and he appeared on Charlotte’s Summer League squad recently, too.
Macura only played 17 total minutes with the Hornets last year; on the Swarm, he put up averages of 16.4 points on 54.8% effective field goal shooting (which included a 36.8% hit rate on three-point shots), to go with 3.8 rebounds and 2.7 assists in 27.9 minutes per game, per Basketball Reference’s G-League statistics.
In four seasons at Xavier, Macura averaged 10.6 points per game on 53.0% effective field goal shooting, which included a three-point shooting clip of 35.2% on 3.7 attempts per contest (per Sports Reference).
The listed at 6-foot-5, 203-pound Macura is definitely not a player that’s going to be shy letting it fly when opportunities arise, and the 24-year-old would likely get on the floor at some point due to shooting ability curling around screens, such as around Ante Zizic or Larry Nance Jr., or from spot-up situations after penetration kick-outs.
It’s not as if the Cleveland Cavaliers won’t have guards/perimeter players that will be needing a bunch of meaningful minutes, though, and Macura doesn’t project as a player who will get much of a meaningful minutes-share with the Cavs (currently he does not have one of the team’s set roster spots going into training camp, per Fedor), but with injuries and potential trades of one of or a few of their expiring pieces, maybe he’ll get some run at some point in the 2019-20 season.
Moreover, this further emphasizes that head coach John Beilein and his staff, along with general manager Koby Altman and the front office, are going to want the Cavaliers to be primarily focused on having effective spacing and knocking down three-point shots at a high clip in the coming years.
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Cleveland’s selections in the 2019 NBA Draft of Darius Garland, Dylan Windler and Kevin Porter Jr. signaled that right off the bat, and even more so with Windler, as we’ve detailed.
Though Garland and Porter didn’t have a big sample size, those three rookies all shot over 40.0% from three-point land in college (per Sports Reference), and this reported signing of Macura as an end-of-bench player on occasion/maybe a two-way, in addition to the reported two-way signing of a stretch four in Wade, all but cemented that the Cavs are focused on first improving their perimeter shooting in the coming years.
Cleveland had the league’s second-worst true shooting rate and placed in the bottom third of the NBA in both three-pointers made and attempted per game (per NBA.com)
Cleveland’s roster shot way too many inefficient/ill-advised deep mid-range shots last season that ended up making good ball-swings meaningless far too often by the Cavs passing up too many in-rhythm and open three-point looks, and it appears that won’t be the case much going forward.
While the team is rebuilding, and they have Kevin Love‘s post-up repertoire/passing feel and career 37.0% three-point shooting clip to help open up their other perimeter pieces such as Sexton, Garland and Windler, at least for now (and possibly long term), I understand where Altman and company is coming from with this Macura signing.
As Fear The Sword’s Chris Manning touched on, Macura, who seems to be a fit that will likely end up playing mostly with Cleveland’s G-League affiliate, the Canton Charge, anyway, can be a player that can develop more this year with the Charge and continuing progressing with the team and eventually have a shot to be a rotational NBA two guard.
Defense clearly did not seem to be much of a factor in this Macura signing, though, as he’s fairly limited there on-ball and should be focused on rotating well to shooters and/or cutters, as Nik Stauskas was before, and the drafting of Garland and Windler wasn’t too much about the defensive end, either.
Nonetheless, in this rebuild, at least for 2019-20, the Cavs don’t seem to be concerned about that side of the ball as much and are likely looking to establish themselves as an effective three-point shooting team with ball and man movement being key, and they will likely look to plug in better defenders in the next few seasons I would imagine through the draft and/or reasonable free agent signings if cap space opens up/they can’t find good trade returns for all expiring pieces.