Cavs: Three focus areas for Darius Garland for rest of 2019-20

Focus area #1 for DG: Keep trusting the J/floater from further out

Putting it bluntly, Garland needs to keep trusting his jumper.

I get that Garland started slow with his J and has been hit-or-miss in January, and on the season, is shooting fairly average from deep at the aforementioned 35.1 percent. Anyhow, we’ve seen plenty of instances this season where Garland has generated tons of space from defenders and hit from way behind the three-point line.

Though a 32.2 percent hit rate on pull-up triples, according to NBA.com’s shot tracking data, is not exactly gaudy for Garland, it could be worse.

DG is hitting pull-up treys at a higher clip than Atlanta Hawks All-Star starter, Trae Young, did in Young’s rookie year. While the volume was higher in his rookie season in 2018-19, as it was 4.3 attempts compared to Garland’s 2.5 attempts this year, Young hit 31.1 percent of his deep balls as a rook on pull-ups, per NBA.com’s shot tracking data again.

I’m not trying to say Garland is not going to be on Young’s level, but Darius’ off-the-bounce perimeter shooting is encouraging.

Garland has also hit a robust 37.8 percent of his catch-and-shoot triples, too, which I’ll take at this point in his rookie year. Now, I’ll admit, while Garland’s shot alright on pull-up two-pointers at 40.4 percent, he has struggled mightily near the rim and hit just 46.9 percent from 0-3 feet out, per Basketball Reference.

Garland has shown he’s getting more comfortable with his floaters in the lane and/or off the window, though, and that improved awareness as a floater/runner man was on display against the Raps.

He just needs to keep going to those more in settled offense, and not test bigs closer to the basket as he was doing far too often seemingly before the turn of the year.

Alright well that wraps it up as far as what I believe DG needs to focus on the most the rest of his rookie year.

Hopefully he applies this moving forward and progresses gradually the rest of this campaign and going into the 2020 offseason.