3 takeaways from the Cavaliers’ 106-86 loss to the Knicks

Takeaway #2: Garland and Sexton struggle

In the month of January, Darius Garland has looked like he’s gotten his pre-injury legs back, as he’s made tons of strides this month and has shown everybody why the Cavs took him with the fifth overall pick in last year’s draft.

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In the month of January, Garland came into Monday starting to surge a bit, and this month is averaging 15.3 points and 5.7 assists per game, as indicated by NBA.com, which had been on track for being the best month of his NBA career and still is, anyhow.

This was maybe Garland’s worst game in some time, though; granted, his fourth quarter against the Bulls on Saturday was a rough end to the team’s six-game road trip.

Anyway, Garland only had 11 points and three assists, while also committing two turnovers, as shown by ESPN.

Garland couldn’t get into any kind of rhythm, and struggled to find his shot all game, only hitting one-of-six from three-point land and he went four-of-20 overall from the field.

Sexton, like Garland, has really turned it on in the month of January especially as a scorer.

This month, Sexton has averaged 22.4 points, 3.6 rebounds and 2.5 assists per game, per NBA.com. He’s also seemed to rediscover his three-point shot a bit, as he’s shooting 46.3% from deep in January and 45.7% from the floor.

Much like Garland and most of the other Cavs on Monday, though, Sexton looked like he didn’t have his legs under him and just got off of a long road trip. Sexton had 17 points, but came back down to earth in this game shooting only six-of-20 from the field and one-of-four from deep.

The Cavs don’t play again until Thursday when they have another winnable game against the Washington Wizards. You’d think the Wine and Gold should be well-rested by then and I’d expect bounce back games from Garland and Sexton against the team with the league’s worst defensive rating, according to NBA.com.