It’s good to see Collin Sexton is injury replacement for Miami’s Tyler Herro in RS Game

It was announced on Tuesday that Cleveland Cavaliers guard Collin Sexton is going to be the injury replacement for the Miami Heat’s Tyler Herro in the 2020 Rising Stars Game. That’s a plus at least for Sexton, who should’ve been in the game in the first place.

Cleveland Cavaliers second-year guard Collin Sexton is a player that needs to continue to develop in terms of the all-around game, but what second-year NBA players don’t?

That being said, Sexton continues to prove that he’s such a gifted scorer, as he’s leading the Cavaliers in scoring in the 2019-20 season with 19.7 points per game and is doing so on a solid 54.4 true shooting clip, according to NBA.com.

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It’s also been so impressive that Sexton as a smaller guard at 6-foot-1 has yet to miss a game in his first two seasons to this point, and to me, it was awful that Sexton was not initially selected to represent Team USA in the 2020 Rising Stars Game on All-Star Weekend in Chicago.

On the plus side for Sexton, though, it’s good to see that he’ll be on the Rising Stars stage now, as according to Shams Charania of The Athletic and Stadium, Sexton is going to be the injury replacement for the Miami Heat’s Tyler Herro on Team USA. Herro is reportedly dealing with an ankle injury he suffered earlier this month.

For reference, the exhibition features two teams, Team USA and Team World, that have 10 players chosen by NBA assistant coaches.

Those players all have to be first and second-year players, and in terms of roster construction, there’s four backcourt players, four frontcourt players and two “wild cards” that can be either position group.

Here are the updated rosters after Sexton is now in.

Anyway, it’s great for Sexton that he’ll now be able to rep the Cleveland Cavaliers as their only participant in All-Star Weekend festivities, as Collin, injury replacement or not, truly deserves to be in the Rising Stars Game.

The consistent scoring outputs he has usually night-in and night-out, the incredible effort he gives, and the way he’s improved drastically as a perimeter shooter coming since college at Alabama has been remarkable. Though Collin had a rough December in terms of three-point shooting, he hit 44.6 percent of his 4.6 attempts per game from deep in January and thus far in February has hit 55.0 percent in four contests, according to NBA.com.

Sexton is third among players in his 2018 draft class in scoring, trailing only budding superstars in Trae Young of the Atlanta Hawks and Luka Doncic of the Dallas Mavericks, as indicated by NBA.com. Furthermore, as Cleveland.com’s Chris Fedor highlighted, Collin “leads all sophomores with 123 career double-digit scoring efforts.”

It’s also been really encouraging that Sexton, much like Darius Garland and Cedi Osman, has been showing growth as a playmaker recently for the Cleveland Cavaliers, which helps players such as Kevin Love and Andre Drummond, among others.

Moreover, Sexton touched on how he was excited to hear the news of him getting the Rising Stars nod from general manager Koby Altman, but was ultimately not losing it, if you will, because that’s not Collin’s style, as Fedor emphasized.

It was right-on from Altman in hitting on how it’s nice for the Cleveland Cavaliers to have someone repping them on All-Star Weekend, and I’m glad that Sexton was ultimately rewarded for his hard work.

Again, Collin should’ve been selected by NBA assistants in the first place, and as the aforementioned Fedor transcribed, Sexton is going to keep that as a chip for him going forward.

"“I’m going to continue to use it as motivation, fuel to continue to get better and continue to work hard each and every day I come into the gym,” Sexton said."

I’m happy for Sexton that he’ll be able to represent the Wine and Gold on All-Star Weekend, as he’s more than deserving.

Sexton continues to be as hard of a worker as it gets, and this sort of thing (I’m hoping Herro’s ankle fully recovers, by the way) is a reward for the effort Collin seems to put forth every day, which is good to see from a player that appears to be a key piece for the team in coming years.

Hopefully Collin can improve on the defensive end, off the ball, in particular, and keep growing as a playmaker, because with his relentlessness as a scorer, he should have a very long NBA career as is.

For clarification purposes, the 2020 NBA Rising Stars Game in Chicago is on February 14 at 9 p.m. ET and airs on TNT.

Congrats, Collin!