Although the Cleveland Cavaliers are expected to be towards the bottom of the barrel when it comes to the NBA standings, they have a few guys were taking a flyer on in your fantasy draft.
Fantasy sports, while having been enormously popular in the NFL, has really started to take off over the last 3-5 years in the NBA. Daily fantasy like Fanduel and Draftkings have really elevated fantasy sports in other leagues.
For the Cleveland Cavaliers, the fantasy outlook may look poor. However, they have some very quality fantasy players in their starting lineup that fantasy players everywhere would be wise to select.
The format that this article will base the Cavs’ starters fantasy projections off of is ESPN’s points scoring system.
First up is the projected Cavaliers’ starting point guard, rookie, Darius Garland.
Starting point guard – Darius Garland
When it comes to predicting how a player translates from college to the NBA, it’s nearly impossible. It’s also very difficult to decide on where a rookie should be selected in a respected fantasy draft.
The best way to project a rookie is to look at the situation he is in and to compare them to a rookie from the previous year who was in a similar situation with a similar skillset. For Garland, he can look no further than fellow teammate Collin Sexton.
Sexton was in a similar situation last year where he was relied upon to have a high usage rate each night, and they also have a similar play style, which is that of a score-first point guard.
According to Fantasy Pros, Garland has an ADP (Average Draft Position) of 178, 51st among players with point guard eligibility. In a 12 team league, this would mean Garland would be coming off the board, on average, in the 15th round.
Garland will be far and away worth a 15th round selection, and perhaps higher than that. His usage rate should be very high when he’s on the floor. If he is a better distributor than what he showed in his limited action at Vanderbilt (2.6 assists over five games according to Sports Reference), then he could be a steal of your draft.