Cavs: Darius Garland-Kevin Love two-man game should be much improved

Darius Garland and Kevin Love should have better chemistry next season for the Cleveland Cavaliers.

It seems pretty safe to say that the on-floor chemistry between Darius Garland and Kevin Love should be improved next season for the Cleveland Cavaliers. Garland had his struggles as a rookie last season, and earlier on in his rookie campaign, in particular, he did not seem comfortable.

His prior meniscus injury at Vanderbilt reportedly affected his mindset, or so it seemed, and played into a lack of aggression in the scoring sense, but overall, he seemed to be second guessing, and even in the playmaking sense more so earlier on. Cleveland.com’s Cameron Fields pointed out how Garland’s foot injury dating back to training camp didn’t aid him in the outset of 2019-20, either, which was fair to say.

Next season, Garland does need to improve upon his rough 40.1 percent shooting clip, and he definitely needs to show more in year 2 in the pick-and-roll game in the scoring sense. I believe Garland is fully capable of improving in the scoring department and/or be more efficient, though, but one thing that is reasonable to foresee is him having better chemistry with pieces such as Collin Sexton, Kevin Porter Jr., Larry Nance Jr. and others.

Along those lines, one player that I’m especially looking forward to seeing in a two-man game a bunch with Garland, I’d imagine, particularly if the Cavs draft a wing, of which Bleacher Report’s Dan Favale seemingly suggested could be the case, is Kevin Love.

Granted, Sports Illustrated‘s Sam Amico reported this week that an opposing NBA executive “strongly” believes the Cavs will trade their fifth overall pick, but I still would expect the Wine and Gold to end up taking that selection. That’s due to the plethora of high quality defensive prospects that should be available there.

Anyhow, swinging back, I fully expect the Garland-Love duo to flourish next season, and they should get plenty of burn as a duo overall.

In their second season together on the Cleveland Cavaliers, the Garland-Love two-man game should be much improved.

Darius Garland had his issues getting the ball to Love a fair amount during the earlier portion of his rookie year, and Love clearly let his frustrations out at times it seemed duo to problems getting the ball to him or the Cavs in general not moving it to his liking in the team sense.

Love did apologize after a few instances in-game/on-bench, though, and either way, in especially the 2020 portion of the schedule, Garland was growing more comfortable as a playmaker and got Love going more throughout games to boot. In his last 26 games active, Garland had a better 5.1-to-2.6 assist-to-turnover ratio, as compared to his rookie year overall at 3.9-to-2.7 in that metric.

That played into Love and him seemingly having better chemistry, too, and next year, I’d think that trend should continue, and Love seems to be a huge fan of J.B. Bickerstaff as Cleveland’s head coach, too.

Love, even while it wasn’t the smoothest sailing this now-past season, still hit 37.4 percent of his career-high 7.0 three-point attempts per game in 2019-20 and had 17.6 points per outing on 55.0 percent effective field goal shooting.

So even while Love only hit 30.7 percent of his three-point shots from Garland passes in the season overall and had an overall field goal shooting clip of 36.3 percent, Garland was getting entry passes in Love to get the offense going much quicker during possessions in the last two or so months of the season. That led to better possessions, by and large, and/or more productive ball-swings.

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Love as a passer to Garland also led to Garland hitting a solid 45.1 percent of his shots in 2019-20, which included DG hitting 51.2 percent from three-point land, albeit Garland only attempted 1.8 shots per outing off of Love deliveries.

That said, looking at their second season together for the Cleveland Cavaliers, I’d expect to see plenty of work via handoffs between Love and Garland, which could enable Garland to naturally get into step backs and floaters as a counter to those.

Love could fake those on occasion to get to quick two-dribble mid-range pull-ups when defenses start to anticipate those handoffs, too, and swinging away from the handoff game, Love could feasibly hit Garland via relocation at times in games as well.

That could perhaps come on the weak side via skip feeds or simply if opponents come to double Love in the mid-post if there’s a mismatch scenario, and quick kickouts back to Garland could lead to open triple attempts.

Garland hit a robust 39.2 percent of his 2.6 catch-and-shoot three-point attempts per game, per NBA.com’s shot tracking data, too, and we should see more dishes to him from Love next season in their second year together as Cavs teammates.

The same could go for Garland on occasion hitting Love via relocation, and realistically hit him coming around Andre Drummond, Nance or at times, Jordan Bell, off-ball screens. To counter defenders going over those to contest, Love could cut back toward the baseline for mid-range J’s, or look to cut toward the basket for Garland feeds, too.

Moreover, in the pick-and-roll game/handoff game, I’d expect to see more pick-and-pops between Garland and Love, and we should see Garland get Love mid-post touches much more effectively, as he seemingly was as 2019-20 progressed.

This Garland-Love two-man game should be much improved for the Wine and Gold next season, which should pay dividends for the offense and lead to quality looks to others if both are able to take advantage of defenses potentially cheating to the duo.