The Cleveland Cavaliers’ 2019-20 season is rapidly approaching, and the KJG team discussed that, what made Fred McLeod as good as it gets, and more.
At this point, it seems clear to the Cleveland Cavaliers and their fan base that in coming years, the primary focus is developing young players.
That likely won’t lead to much winning in the 2019-20 season, but with the season coming fast, it seemed relevant to touch on some of what to expect in the preseason, and the KJG crew in this roundtable discussed what made the late Fred McLeod was great as a play-by-play announcer, too.
It’s still so tough to have it sink in that McLeod won’t be calling Cavs games with former Cleveland scorer Austin Carr, but I’m at least more than satisfied with the organization and FOX Sports Ohio having prior radio play-by-play broadcaster, John Michael, as the new partner with Carr, as Michael will bring a familiar feel for fans and he has excellent commentary in games.
Along with that, as was noted, the Cavaliers preseason is rapidly approaching, with the team beginning play on Oct. 7, and preseason (which features four games) wraps up on Oct. 15 (and you can view the entire 2019-20 season schedule here, per the team/NBA.com).
It was really unfortunate that rookie wing Dylan Windler could be out for up to six weeks due to lower leg discomfort he was experiencing in recent team workouts, which was reportedly, per the Cavaliers in an update on Friday, a “left tibial stress reaction.”
That’s really rough news, as the sharpshooter, who averaged 21.3 points per game in 2018-19 and shot 40.6% from three-point range in four seasons at Belmont (per Sports Reference) could seemingly be out at the beginning of the regular season, even, which begins on Oct. 23 at the Orlando Magic. On the bright side, maybe that could mean more minutes for fellow rookie wing Kevin Porter Jr., though.
Anyway, in this latest roundtable, the KJG team also discussed the potential workload for the Darius Garland–Collin Sexton pairing in preseason in relation to that, and at this point, according to Cleveland.com’s Chris Fedor, there is seemingly a good chance that Garland and Sexton will be the starting Cleveland backcourt for head coach John Beilein and the mostly-new coaching staff.
That’s a plus, too, with the Cavaliers’ rebuilding focus in coming years, but how much does the pairing get in the preseason is unclear, though I do believe they could use a decent amount, anyhow.
However, Garland not playing in the Summer League, and only appearing in five games in his season at Vanderbilt, of which he averaged 16.2 points per game on 63.9% effective field goal shooting (per Sports Reference) due to a reported meniscus tear makes it reasonable that he doesn’t get much work alongside Sexton in the preseason, but again, Sexton and Garland need to have their chemistry develop on the floor in game action, though.
From there, we also talked about Kevin Love‘s Sports Illustrated ranking as the 41st-best player in their top 100 going into the 2019-20 season (which was written by Rob Mahoney), Love’s potential as the starting 5 most nights (as was forecasted by Fedor), and also touched up on the minutes-share of Cleveland’s expiring pieces that are set to be unrestricted free agents after next season.
To refresh, those players include guards Jordan Clarkson, Matthew Dellavedova and Brandon Knight and bigs Tristan Thompson and John Henson.
Alright so we’ll move on to the first roundtable question.