Cleveland Cavaliers: Three handoff pairings to watch in 2020-21
By Dan Gilinsky
Key handoff pairing #1 to watch for the Cleveland Cavaliers: Garland-Love
The first, and realistically most notable handoff pairing to watch for the Cavs next season from my perspective involves Darius Garland and Kevin Love. The reason for that is even though we didn’t see it enough last season, Garland is a highly capable shooter off-the-bounce.
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Hopefully with him reportedly 100 percent now, we should see that more with him not thinking of his prior meniscus injury at Vanderbilt, and coming off handoffs from Love, he could fire more after a few dribbles.
On handoff scoring situations, Garland did shoot 47.9 percent, too, and placed in the 65th percentile last season, per Synergy Sports, which was encouraging.
Albeit in these type of scenarios involving Garland, whose playmaking feel improved as his rookie year progressed, he should be able to feed Love for plenty of pick-and-pop looks.
In those situations for Love, he is very productive right off-the-catch from three-point range, or after a quick ball fake and then rhythm dribble after generating space. Love hit 37.4 percent of his career-high 7.0 three-point attempts in 2019-20, too.
I’d expect with the Garland-Love pairing in their second season together, that their timing in these situations should be better in terms of the drop-offs and feeds. Additionally, if defenses begin to overplay Love perimeter looks in these situations, he could very well cut harder to the basket, and with Garland’s vision, he’d easily find him for high percentage looks.
Also, with Love being a willing and able passer, he could occasionally fake handoffs to Garland, and hit a cutting Cedi Osman along the baseline or Collin Sexton after them clearing out from the corner if that is there.
Moving on, the second key handoff pairing to watch for Cleveland involves two bench pieces.