Cavs: 3 stats that jump out from Kevin Porter Jr.’s rookie season

Porter’s assist rate of 14.7 percent

For a natural score-first player, it’s been terrific to see the passing willingness of Porter in settled offense, and as was previously mentioned, in transition.

While a baseline split of 2.2 assists per outing thus far is not shattering any rookie records, KPJ having an assist rate of 14.7 percent this season, as demonstrated by NBA.com, has definitely jumped out to me.

Porter has had a turnover rate of 14.0 percent, and he’ll hopefully in coming years trim that rate down a bit, but in his last 12 games active, it was nice to see Porter have a turnover rate of 10.2 percent.

Moreover, Porter routinely found dump-offs to bigs such as Nance, before the trade deadline, John Henson, and had since had some dishes to Andre Drummond post-deadline in that way, and Porter also had his share of drive-and-kicks to shooters such as Darius Garland, Kevin Love and others.

Alfonzo McKinnie, Sexton and Cedi Osman have benefited from Porter’s passing feel as cutters, too, and Sexton and Osman have as perimeter shooters, too.

I’d think that Dylan Windler, who has not played at all in his first season due to complications involving a stress reaction in his left leg, will be on the receiving end of plenty of Porter feeds as a cutter/shooter in coming years, too.

Moving forward, I’d imagine we’ll see Porter more and more in the pick-and-roll game, and before the hiatus, J.B. Bickerstaff mentioned how he wanted to see KPJ some as the season was to go on operate at the point guard position, seemingly due to how KPJ had shown more and more growth as a passer as the year had been progressing.

Anyhow, the secondary playmaking Porter has provided has been awesome to see, and we should see more of that in the near future, with perhaps some primary playmaking opportunities mixed in.

The other statistic that’s jumped out from KPJ’s rookie season to this point has related to his off-ball viability.