Cavs: Winning Rookie of the Year is not important for Darius Garland

For Cleveland Cavaliers rookie lead guard Darius Garland, winning the 2019-20 Rookie of the Year is not important; there’s several players that will likely have pretty high usage on Cleveland, and Garland just needs to gradually improve and focus on playing the right way.

The Cleveland Cavaliers selected Darius Garland fifth overall in the 2019 NBA Draft because they reportedly believe he has All-Star potential.

We’ve touched on how Garland projects as a highly-capable perimeter shooter both off-the-bounce and off-the-catch, and I don’t really think that potential All-Star expectation is really all that much of an exaggeration if Garland can stay healthy in his career and pieces such as Dylan Windler, Kevin Porter Jr., Collin Sexton and Cedi Osman can work out in the long run around Garland.

There will be likely ups and downs in Garland’s rookie season, as there really always is for rookie point guards (Garland will probably have minutes where he’s primarily off the ball, too, though) in the NBA, and that will almost certainly be the same for Garland in 2019-20.

That’s even more likely to be the case on a team that will probably be playing a bunch of young guys big minutes, and likely even more so as the season progresses and the Cavs likely trade away a fair amount of expiring veterans.

To review, Garland only appeared in five collegiate games at Vanderbilt due to a reported meniscus tear, and in those games as we’ve referenced repeatedly here at KJG, Garland showed how he could be a high-level scorer in coming years, as he had 16.2 points per game on 63.9% effective field goal shooting, including a 47.8% clip from three-point range (per Sports Reference).

It’s understandable why Garland was a highly-touted player coming out of high school, and lead guards that have the handle and off-the-dribble range he has are more dangerous now than probably ever before in the NBA.

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Additionally, Garland, along with hopefully Sexton, Porter and other young pieces, should steadily improve under the tutelage of Cleveland head coach John Beilein, but overall, I wouldn’t expect the organization to have real Rookie of the Year expectations for Garland.

I just want Garland to show that he’s capable of growing steadily as a playmaker/decision-maker for the Cleveland Cavaliers in the halfcourt and pick-and-roll situations especially, and let opportunities come to him more throughout games, and not force the issue too much, which rookie lead guards (which are more so scorers first now) are susceptible to doing.

That could also possibly cause him to not stay healthy, which would be really unfortunate for the 19-year-old’s progression throughout his rookie year.

It’s not as if Sexton had an ideal 2018-19 rookie season, and his playmaking splits (3.0 assists per game and 3.4 assists per-36 minutes, per Basketball Reference) you’d like to see improve in coming years ideally.

He definitely turned it on and was at least getting more comfortable/initiating ball-swings as the year progressed, though, and as KJG contributors have referenced often, Sexton really closed strong with quite a scoring surge post-All-Star break as he led Cleveland in scoring in that stretch with 20.8 points per game (on 58.5% true shooting, per NBA.com).

With the Cleveland Cavaliers likely having Kevin Love healthier in 2019-20 (he only appeared in 22 games, per Basketball Reference, last season) and likely commanding the team’s highest usage among qualified players, and Beilein and the coaching staff also needing to have Osman, Sexton, I would hope Ante Zizic, along with Porter and Windler needing to get decent usage in their minutes for the growth of those players and the offense to be more multiple, I again, don’t see winning the Rookie of the Year as being important for Garland.

Adding to that, one has to think that the New Pelicans’ Zion Williamson (a possibly generational talent that has the all-around skill set and functional athleticism to affect games on both ends in a variety of ways unlike most rookies), the New York Knicks’ RJ Barrett (who will likely have a huge usage rate and should be one of New York’s best primary options), the Memphis Grizzlies’ Ja Morant (a player who will have the ball in his hands all the time, too and is a better all-around point guard currently than Garland) and perhaps the Chicago Bulls’ Coby White, among others, will all be steep competition for Garland when it comes to the Rookie of the Year voting, anyhow.

That being said, if the Cavs have a huge amount of injuries and a combination of trading of the Cavs’ expiring guards (Jordan Clarkson, Matthew Dellavedova and Brandon Knight) happens much earlier than the NBA trade deadline in February, maybe Garland will have a higher usage and have higher assist totals than I’d expect than currently for the season’s sample size.

For the record, I agree with KJG’s Tyler Marling, who predicted that Garland will average 14.6 points on 44.2% overall shooting (including 38.0% from three-point range), to go with 4.2 assists per game in a 31.0-minute workload.

Those numbers seem reasonable, as the Cleveland Cavaliers need to see what they have in a Garland-Sexton backcourt in a sizable chunk of meaningful minutes next season (and probably seasons, as in plural), but I still don’t think with Cleveland having the look of a team that could feasibly finish in the league’s bottom five or so, that those numbers and the lack of winning in meaningful games give Garland particularly favorable Rookie of the Year chances.

Also, if Garland has to carry Cleveland for long stretches of next year, as Sexton and Osman seemed to often last year, that likely means others aren’t growing considerably and Beilein’s ball and man movement focus isn’t as effective in the grand scheme as one would hope is eventually the case.

So again, winning the 2019-20 Rookie of the Year is not really important for Garland.

He and the coaching staff just need to make sure Garland’s progressing gradually as the season moves along and hopefully he can become more efficient in picking his spots to score and improve as a playmaker/decision-maker, at least progress some as an off-ball defender, stay mostly healthy and become more comfortable with his teammates on and off the floor.