Cavs: Revisiting stats predictions for Cedi Osman, Kevin Love and Tristan Thompson

Revisiting my 2019-20 stats predictions for Osman

My predictions: 12.2 PPG on 54.9 percent true shooting, 5.1 RPG, 3.1 APG, 27.2 MPG and 77 games active

Osman’s 2019-20 stats thus far: 11.0 PPG on 55.2 percent true shooting, 3.6 RPG, 2.4 APG, 29.4 MPG and 65 games active

Looking back at my predictions before the 2019-20 season, I was expecting Osman to frankly have some more playmaking opportunities earlier on in the season, and I’d have thought he’d be more active in the rebounding department.

Where I’ve been off the mark: On-ball creation/rebounding/minutes

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Heading into this season, I again would’ve expected Osman to have some more playmaking opportunities.

For a while, though, even while he has been hitting three-point shots pretty consistently for most of the year as an off-ball player more at 38.3 percent, Osman was not very active for a good stretch of the year with Beilein at head coach as a secondary playmaker.

Nor was he as a scoring threat off-the-bounce, and we’ve seen Osman seemingly taking a back seat often.

Osman was often standing around the perimeter earlier on, and still has to a large extent, and even if the Cavs don’t particularly want Osman on the ball a ton of the time, he still can make things happen for others.

The third-year player does have above average vision for a small forward and Cedi can make his share of wrap-around feeds, occasional lobs and deliver pieces such as Kevin Love and Sexton the ball on-time in the shooting pocket on the perimeter after drive-and-kicks.

Osman had been more active in terms of secondary playmaking the past month or so heading into the league’s suspension, even if the assist totals/averages didn’t necessarily indicate that.

Anyhow, even with Cleveland having more players that can initiate this season than in 2018-19, I expected Osman to have a bit more assists per outing than the 2.6 he averaged last season, factoring in Beilein’s stressing of ball and man movement (though Bickerstaff does as well).

Along with that, with Love being mostly healthy this year, coupled with Thompson, and also with Nance often involved and later on Drummond, that’s factored into Osman’s rebounding totals dropping by 1.1 thus far in 2019-20.

Granted I understand Osman was playing at the 4 position too often last season with Cleveland having so many injuries and though he had issues defensively there in the post, it likely played into his rebounding numbers being higher than this year.

Somewhat played into that, I’ve been a bit off when it’s come to minutes workload for Cedi, by nearly a few as shown above. That was related to me believing Dylan Windler would cut into Osman’s minutes a bit, but obviously, that’s not happened this year, with Windler being set to miss the whole season due to a stress reaction in his left leg.

So where have I hit with my 2019-20 stats predictions for Osman?

Where I’ve hit: Efficiency

While Osman’s touch inside the paint has been a bit underwhelming on floaters and he’s rushed too many interior attempts, his true shooting clip has been about where I would’ve expected, and it’s been decent at 55.2 percent, per NBA.com.

Again, the key here with Osman has been him having a his highest three-point hit rate of his near-three seasons to this point at 38.3 percent. He’s had his highest three-point attempt rate at 52.7 percent to this point, too.

Hopefully, going forward, seemingly as a bench contributor in coming years, as he has his struggles against starting NBA small forwards (though his team defensive feel is solid), Osman can return closer to his free throw shooting hit rate of 77.9 last season. Osman has hit only 67.0 percent of his free throws thus far this year, but him only having 1.4 per contest as compared to 2.4 last year could be indicating Cedi hasn’t been as much in-rhythm at the line.

Okay so next up, we’ll revisit my 2019-20 stats predictions for K-Love.