The Cleveland Cavaliers are reportedly going to play Jordan Clarkson at the small forward position, or the 3, at times in the 2019-20 season, and that seems to be a bad idea.
The Cleveland Cavaliers have a bunch of guards, meaning 1 and 2’s, on the roster and really not many natural small forwards, and that will probably cause a fair amount of guard-heavy/three-guard lineups to be played.
Cleveland has five players that could all warrant meaningful playing time in games in the 2019-20 season in rookie Darius Garland, second-year guard Collin Sexton, and veterans Jordan Clarkson, Matthew Dellavedova and Brandon Knight, and rookie Kevin Porter Jr., though he’ll probably play the small forward a good amount, could fit in that category, too.
With that being the case, and with the Cavaliers wanting to prioritize spacing this season to further help take advantage of quality big man passers such as Kevin Love and Larry Nance Jr., the team again, will probably use plenty of three-guard lineups.
Furthermore, with rookie Dylan Windler, who would’ve been a natural backup at the 3 for Cedi Osman, reportedly suffering a stress reaction in his left leg and with him likely missing a bit of the regular season with that and him still being a rookie, anyway, Cleveland needs to be creative with how they spell Osman.
According to Cavs head coach John Beilein near the early part of training camp, a player that will play some 3 is Clarkson, a player that is going to attack in terms of looking for shots and filling it up, with his “wolf mentality,” as was reported by Cleveland.com’s Chris Fedor.
Here was more on Beilein’s explanation for that, per Fedor.
"“Jordan Clarkson is going to move over and play some 3 man,” Beilein said following practice Thursday afternoon at Cleveland Clinic Courts. “With Dylan’s injury, he’s going to be over there. You’ve got to have a wolf mentality as a small forward in some of the things we do. There’s not a better wolf on the team than Jordan Clarkson. He’s hunting. We need a hunter at that position.”"
Fedor would go on to emphasize how a wolf is not really a set position for Beilein, but how it’s “probably one of the leading scorers.”
Clarkson, who had 16.8 points per game last season, a career-high (per Basketball Reference), fits into that wolf role, and again, the 6-foot-6, 216-pound Porter would seemingly fit some at the 3 with how he has the potential to create for himself on the ball and with Cleveland likely playing two other guards, anyway.
Again, though, as Fedor alluded to, early on, the youngster might not play a big role.
Anyhow, Jordan Clarkson playing the 3 some is a bad idea for a number of reasons.
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The problem with this is for a team that struggled so much last season on defense, as they had the league’s worst defensive rating (per NBA.com), and will probably once again be really bad on that side of the court, playing Clarkson at the 3 will only cause more problems.
For a team that will probably start two guards that are 6-foot-3-ish in seemingly Garland and Sexton, or at times the 6-foot-4 Dellavedova (when he is fully recovered from his reported thumb sprain) alongside Sexton, I don’t think having certain lineups with Clarkson at the 3 is a good idea.
That’s not even accounting for at times when Love plays the 5, either.
Again considering how bad defensively the Cavs have been and will likely be again, I don’t think playing the 6-foot-5, 194-pound Clarkson is a good idea considering he’d be undersized and over-matched against opposing players when playing the 3.
Even if Beilein and the coaching staff do play John Henson, who is banged up right now and didn’t play in the preseason due to reported groin and ankle injuries, and Nance in the frontcourt when Clarkson does play the 3, as Fedor suggested, Clarkson will still likely be over-matched most of the time.
Even with Clarkson improving some on-ball defensively as last year progressed on the perimeter, this will still put him in a tough spot due to a potentially severe size disadvantage a considerable amount of the time when playing the 3, and it seemed tough for him when he was defending bigger players at times in the preseason.
Him at the 3 will likely cause the Cavs to have to over-help too often there, and with other guards around Clarkson being minus players defensively outside of Dellavedova, there could be a bunch of issues.
I also think right now Clarkson is comfortable (whether he says it publicly or not) and knows exactly what his current role is as well, as a score-first guard off the bench.
Clarkson has an important role as a score-first guard and last year statistically Clarkson had his best year averaging that aforementioned 16.8 points per game and did so on a solid 44.8% shooting (per Basketball Reference). Clarkson was one of the few bright spots on a rebuilding Cleveland Cavaliers team in 2018-19, and I expect him to continue that at the very least during the first half of the season.
Clarkson, who is an expiring contract player, is one of the ideal targets to get traded by the deadline at some point this season, as the Cavs continue on in their rebuild and try to build up more future assets.
The best-case scenario for the Cavaliers would be Clarkson is in the role that he had last year, he continues to play well putting up a lot of points and maintains or increases his trade value by the trade deadline.
If I were Cleveland, I wouldn’t risk having Clarkson out of position where you’re asking too much of him and where he’s overwhelmed leading to an up-and-down season.
Clarkson should continue to be in the situation he was last year, as he will continue to be a valuable piece on the court as a dynamic scoring guard off the bench and again, I wouldn’t change that up by making things worse defensively and again potentially putting him in a bad position playing the 3 a good chunk, and maybe hurting his trade deadline value if he’s more inconsistent than he was last season.