Anthony Edwards would be a big-time pick for the Cleveland Cavaliers in the 2020 NBA Draft.
With the Cleveland Cavaliers’ 2019-20 season officially over, all of the attention surrounding the team shifts to what they will do in the upcoming draft.
As a bottom three finishing team, Cleveland will have a 14.0 percent chance at landing the top overall pick, and a 40.1 percent chance at securing a top-three selection, according to Tankathon.
However, with the lottery odds now flattened more, the Cavaliers do have a 47.8 percent chance of their pick falling outside of the top four.
We saw this happen last year with the Cavaliers. The Wine and Gold went into the 2019 NBA Draft lottery with a 52.1 percent chance to land a top-four pick.
They were shut out of landing Zion Williamson, Ja Morant, and RJ Barrett, though, and fell to the number five slot.
If the Cavaliers’ draft lottery fortunes turn around this year, a player who will be tough to pass up is Georgia freshman Anthony Edwards. The 6-foot-5, 225-pound athletic guard flashed quite a bit of talent this past season.
The first reaction of several people would be “Another guard?” after the Cleveland Cavaliers drafted Collin Sexton eight overall two years ago and Darius Garland fifth overall last year.
Not to mention, they also drafted Kevin Porter Jr., a guard, formally via trade, who displayed a ton of potential before the season was suspended due the novel coronavirus pandemic, and what would ultimately be the end of the Cavs’ season.
At this stage in the Cavaliers’ rebuild, they need to go for the best player available and not draft for positional need in the 2020 NBA Draft.
If Edwards is on the board at the Cleveland Cavaliers’ draft selection, he’s too talented for them to pass up.
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Along those lines, according to a report from Cleveland.com’s Chris Fedor, the Cavs will be going with the best player available, anyhow.
Fedor also said how Edwards is in their top tier of prospects.
The others in that tier are reportedly James Wiseman, who briefly played at Memphis before eventually withdrawing from school after an ineligibility ruling, and LaMelo Ball, who previously played with the NBL’s Illawarra Hawks.
Swinging back to Edwards, he already has an NBA frame, and along with a quick first step, he can finish through contact around the rim.
In general, Edwards is a scorer and can catch fire, just like he did against Michigan State early in the year when he scored 33 points in the second half in a close loss.
With the position the Cavaliers are in, Edwards would likely be in the starting lineup from day one, and him and Sexton would make for quite the starting backcourt pairing.
Sexton and Edwards would be quite the starting backcourt, and Edwards would be freed up on the Cleveland Cavaliers
A drafting of Edwards would bring Sexton back to the lead guard and Garland to the bench. A move like this would allow Sexton to guard players more similar to his height/weight and could lead to improvement from Collin on defense.
The pairing of Sexton and Edwards would have a lot of potential. It would allow Sexton to operate more freely with a legit two-guard next to him.
This would mean teams may not crash hard on Sexton when he drives, and if a defense does, Sexton could use his improved court vision, at least in terms of drive-and-kick feel, to find Edwards either cutting to the hoop, or for an open jump shot.
While Edwards has his strengths, there are also areas of his game that need improvement. While there were nights Edwards’ three-point shot was on target, he only shot 29.4 percent for the season from beyond the arc, per Sports Reference.
Some of this had to do with poor shot selection, but another factor is the fact that Edwards was by far the best player on his team.
This meant opposing teams would tailor the vast majority of their game plan around slowing down the freshman guard, and ESPN’s Mike Schmitz touched on that a bit with Edwards early on in his past season here, among other aspects of his game.
At the next level, Edwards will not be the center of every scouting report, at least at first, and would surely get more open looks. But even if a team gears up to slow Edwards down, he does well at passing out of drives and has decent court vision.
Edwards is also the kind of player that would really help jump-start the Cavs’ rebuilding efforts.
If he’s available, Edwards would jump-start the Cleveland Cavaliers’ rebuild
Edwards is the type of talent that will take the Cavaliers to the next level, and surrounding him with Sexton as well as Porter Jr., Kevin Love, and Andre Drummond would give the Wine and Gold a pretty formidable starting five. That is assuming Drummond picks up his $28.8 million player option, which is reportedly likely.
While other players, such as Ball or Dayton’s Obi Toppin, are realistic options at the top of the 2020 NBA Draft if available, Edwards, who is still just 18, seems to possess the most overall talent of any prospect.
That feeling comes from his natural ability to score the ball from all three levels (19.1 points per game), as well as his quickness and ability to rebound (5.2 rebounds per game) as well as create turnovers (1.3 steals per game).
Before fans even get their hopes up to see Edwards in a Cleveland Cavaliers uniform, though, they will need luck to be on their side in the lottery. If the ping pong balls bounce Cleveland’s way, they could land a player who would help turn their franchise around.
I say all this to say, Edwards is simply too talented to pass up in the 2020 NBA Draft if he’s on the board for the Cavs.