Cleveland Cavaliers: Two key goals for Dante Exum for next season

Exum’s first 2020-21 goal for the Cleveland Cavaliers: Make at least 40 three-pointers

Looking at Exum’s game, he, along with many others around the league, could see great improvements to their game with an improved three-point shot. Exum’s game for the Cleveland Cavaliers this past season involved a good bit of off-ball play and looking at the statistics, of the 13 three-point shots he made, 10 of them were assisted on.

Further looking at what he had done off the ball for the Cavaliers, he shot a pretty healthy 37.5 percent on catch-and-shoot three-point attempts, per NBA.com’s shot tracking data. That was while shooting just about one catch-and-shoot triple per game.

Looking on the roster, one example of how much a three-point shot can do to your game is Larry Nance Jr. After coming into the 2019-20 season with a reformed shot, Nance shot and made the most three-pointers in his career as well as averaged the most points per game he has ever had in a season with 10.1.

For Exum, he shot 37 triples and made 13 of them in 24 games with the Cavaliers, coming out to a shooting clip of that aforementioned 35.1 percent.

Looking at Exum’s play in February, he made 0.6 triples per game on 1.8 attempts per contest in the eight games he played that month. Doing some simple math, expanding those February stats over 82 games, that would come out to about 49 makes on about 147 attempts.

Factoring in his injury concerns and a potential drop off in shooting percentage due to more attempts, 40 made three-point shots should be feasible when you also take into account that he would be taking some of the minutes of Matthew Dellavedova. That’s seemingly if the Cavaliers were to let Delly walk in free agency, though, and it’s unclear if that will ultimately be the case.

The second key goal has to do with Exum’s availability in 2020-21.