Cleveland Cavaliers: Where Collin Sexton ranks against other starting SG’s

With him projected to start at shooting guard for the Cleveland Cavaliers in 2019-20, it seemed relevant to see where Collin Sexton stacked up against the other 30 projected starting shooting guards in the NBA.

The 2018-19 season was a mixed bag for Cleveland Cavaliers then-rookie guard Collin Sexton.

Due to the team eventually shifting toward a full-rebuild after a rough 0-6 start to the year, Kevin Love getting injured for a good chunk of the year with reported toe surgery right away, and other injuries and roster turnover, Sexton was forced into being one of Cleveland’s primary scorers and/or go-to options offensively.

As a result, it was anything but easy for Sexton for much of the season, and his playmaking splits you’d have liked to have seen improve, but again, he was only a rookie (and for reference, 100% of Sexton’s minutes were considered at point guard, per Basketball Reference).

For now, though, it seems that the bulk of Sexton’s minutes could feasibly be with him playing the 2 guard, given that at least currently, Cleveland.com’s Chris Fedor, a quality reference on the situation for Cleveland, sees Cleveland’s starters for next year, at least for most instances, being a Darius Garland-Sexton-Cedi Osman–Larry Nance Jr.-Love lineup.

So in swinging back to Sexton’s performance last year, pre-All-Star break, he had 15.1 points, 3.1 rebounds and 2.9 assists per game. His true shooting rate was only 48.9%, though, per NBA.com.

Post-All-Star, Sexton, as we’ve often referenced, really picked up his play, and this was encouraging to see, as he led the Cleveland Cavaliers with 20.8 points per game on a much-improved 58.8% true shooting clip, to go with 3.2 assists and 2.4 rebounds per contest (per NBA.com).

Defensively, Sexton, along with many other Cavaliers (Cleveland had the league’s worst defensive rating last year, again, per NBA.com), struggled mightily, though, and a defensive backcourt of Garland and Sexton will likely have tons of issues there due to physical limitations and both being so young (Garland is 19 and Sexton is 20).

So where does Sexton stack up among projected starting 2’s around the league? We’ll get into that now.