Cleveland Cavaliers: Former Cavs guard Jordan Clarkson should be poised for postseason redemption with Jazz

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Utah Jazz guard Jordan Clarkson handles the ball. (Photo by Will Newton/Getty Images) /

I’ll be pulling for former Cleveland Cavaliers guard and current Utah Jazz one in Jordan Clarkson in the NBA restart.

The 2019-20 season is over for the Cleveland Cavaliers, as they had the league’s second-worst record at 19-46 going into the NBA season’s novel coronavirus-induced hiatus. That initially begin in early-to-mid March when the Utah Jazz’s Rudy Gobert tested positive for COVID-19, and the league went into again, hiatus, as a result.

Only the league’s top 22 teams were invited to Orlando for the season’s restart, seemingly due to wanting to limit exposure to COVID-19 when it came to teams not really in play for the postseason. That again led to the Cavs not being participants.

The Wine and Gold were playing better post-All-Star break leading into the hiatus, and were a more respectable 5-6 after J.B. Bickerstaff took over the head coaching reigns, on the plus side. Cleveland was sixth in assist rate and 10th in effective field goal percentage in that stretch, and I’m pumped to see the Wine and Gold in action in 2020-21.

The Cavs could reportedly be a squad that has a form of mini camps and four Summer League-type games in a second NBA bubble location for non-0rlando teams in Chicago in September, but we’ll see on that. Due to COVID-19 concerns, that’s seemingly anything but a certainty.

So while Cavs fans won’t be able to see Collin Sexton, Darius Garland, Kevin Love and others in action in Orlando, and maybe not until 2020-21, it should still be fun to watch the other squads. That’s with the postseason in mind, in particular, of course.

One of the former Cavs players in the bubble that I’ll be especially pulling for to do well is former Cavs bench scoring extraordinaire Jordan Clarkson, who is now on the Utah Jazz. The Jazz are currently in the fourth spot in the Western Conference, and while I wouldn’t say they’re a true contender to win it all in the bubble, they are a solid squad, headlined by stars Donovan Mitchell and the aforementioned Gobert.

In Clarkson’s case, the ex-Cleveland Cavaliers guard is poised for postseason redemption, too, I believe.

Clarkson’s first postseason experience didn’t go well, but I think his second go-round will be much different.