Cavs: Predicting the 3 best off-movement shooters in 2020-21

One of the Cleveland Cavaliers’ three best 2020-21 off-movement shooters: Darius Garland

Darius Garland has had growing pains throughout his rookie season thus far, and that’s evident.

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He’s been somewhat underwhelming with just 12.3 points per game, and his 35.5 percent hit rate on three-point looks has left some to be desired, given his natural ability as a shooter. His playmaking instincts have been a positive, though, and in last 10 games active, he had 4.9 assists to just 1.8 turnovers per outing.

Looking at next season, with him operating feasibly in some more instances off the ball, too, I firmly believe we’ll see Garland establish himself as one of the Cavs’ best off-movement shooters.

He has hit a robust 39.2 percent of his catch-and-shoot three-point attempts so far in 2019-20, per NBA.com’s shot tracking data, and as he had been getting more comfortable, we were seeing the rookie hit triples a fair amount coming off screens.

With Garland heading into his second year, I’d expect him to be a key relocation piece for Cleveland in sequences with the likes of Kevin Love, Andre Drummond, who is reportedly likely to pick up his $28.8 million player option for 2020-21, and also Larry Nance Jr.

I expect to see Garland get his share of looks in the mid-range area with him being more accustomed to opponents over-extending to him off-ball to prevent three-point looks and receiving looks off moving into the mid-range area more, too. In those instances, the likes of Cedi Osman, Kevin Porter Jr. and Collin Sexton could find him as well.

That’d feasibly come after being freed up from off-ball back screens from Drummond, Love and/or Nance, and I’d just prefer to see Garland take those looks and/or deep off-movement deep balls more. In that regard, I also believe he’ll display more confidence.

I’d imagine that the Cavs will stress for Garland, even while I’d think we’ll see him firing a bunch in pick-and-roll situations, to fire shots off of movement more and more as the year progresses. That’s even more so with KPJ, in particular, handling playmaking duties a considerable amount of the time with the attention he’ll draw from opposing defenses as Cleveland’s best driving threat.

Next up, I have very high hopes for a fellow 2019 Cavs’ draft pick as an off-movement shooter in 2020-21 and beyond.