Cleveland Cavaliers: Two key goals for Dante Exum for next season
By Amadou Sow
Exum’s second 2020-21 goal for the Cleveland Cavaliers: Play in at least 60 games
For Exum, the biggest gripe about him has been his injury history. Looking at his long lists of injuries, Exum has dealt with multiple knee injuries, a shoulder injury, and he also sustained a left ankle injury in late February. Granted, with the necessary precautions put in place by the Cleveland Cavaliers, this goal could be met by Exum.
The Cavaliers could do to Exum similar to what they had done with Kevin Love this past season, strategically sitting him out of certain games, such as the second game of a back-to-back, allowing Exum to preserve his body and lessen the risk of an injury.
That’s especially so when seeing these comments from Atlanta Hawks general manager Travis Schlenk saying how the league, as was h/t ESPN’s Tim Bontemps, told GMs how 2020-21 “could be condensed” to seemingly maintain operations as normal regarding the schedule, after how the novel coronavirus has impacted 2019-20. USA TODAY‘s Mark Medina did note how Schlenk still alluded to how the NBA is aiming to have an 82-game schedule, though.
Hawks general manager Travis Schlenk said on a conference call with reporters this morning that the NBA has indicated to the league's GMs that next year's schedule could be condensed in order to try to keep the league as close to its usual timeline as possible.
— Tim Bontemps (@TimBontemps) June 9, 2020
Hawks GM Travis Schlenk said that NBA indicated to league GMs that next season's schedule could be condensed so that calendar is somewhat similar to normal seasons, but would still be an 82-game schedule.
— Mark Medina (@MarkG_Medina) June 9, 2020
With that 82-game schedule still being the focus here, this suggested preservation strategy helped Love this past season, as he has played in 56 out of 65 possible games. Love hadn’t sustained a major injury this past season and this strategy will help to prolong his career.
60 games played would be the third-most games played in a season by Exum and would be the most played in a season by him since the 2016-17 season.
It seemed as if the team and Exum were finally starting to gel during February as he would record an offensive rating of 107.5, the highest he had in any month in 2019-20, per NBA.com.
Next. Two goals for Collin Sexton for next season. dark
If the Cleveland Cavaliers are to make massive strides and improvements as a team, they are going to need all hands on deck and with Exum’s defending and facilitating abilities, his role could be vital to the Cavaliers’ success. Hopefully him being a viable perimeter shooting threat could tie into that, too.