Cleveland Cavaliers: Five lineups they could use in 2019-20
By Tyler Meitin
#1 – A lineup of mostly projected starters:
Garland-Sexton-Osman-Love-Thompson
This lineup is one that is both quite entertaining and also a lineup that the Cavs could put out next season often, and at times, reportedly start in some games against teams featuring very physical centers, according to Cleveland.com’s Chris Fedor.
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Garland was brought in with his All-Star potential in mind and the team will seek to feature that from him very soon. The team will very likely look to use Garland in a similar type of style as the way Portland Trail Blazers do star point guard Damian Lillard.
Sexton began to flourish as the secondary ball-handler next to guys like Brandon Knight and Matthew Dellavedova last season, so it is fair to think he could play even better next to a guard with Garland’s potential and talent.
Garland, though the sample size was only five games at Vanderbilt due to a reported meniscus tear, had 16.2 points per game on an impressive 63.9% effective field goal shooting clip (per Sports Reference).
Osman is entering a big third season in the NBA following a season in which he took significant strides forward but also struggled in certain areas, largely on the defensive end of the ball.
He is coming off a relatively strong FIBA World Cup Tournament with Turkey in which he largely looked like an All-Star tier player at times throughout (though it was FIBA play and not mostly NBA competition in most instances).
Kevin Love and Tristan Thompson played a combined total of 65 games (Kevin played only 22 games mostly due to reported toe surgery and Tristan played 43 games mostly due to a foot injury) in the 2018-19 NBA season, per NBA.com.
Anyone can see that, in an 82-game season, having your two primary big men playing that little can surely negatively impact the team in all sorts of ways. The two must stay healthy but if they do so, the team has an All-Star caliber power forward in Love and one of the better veteran centers despite his reputation in Thompson.
This lineup is a unique one because it certainly can fizzle out and not do well in certain aspects, but it also could potentially be one that is very successful. The success of this lineup largely will come from the offensive side of the ball and will very likely be led by Sexton and Garland scoring and playmaking-wise.
Expect to see this lineup sooner rather than later, and even potentially very early into the season.