Look out for Sexton to Love a bunch for the Cavs, too
While it’s no secret that Sexton, who led the Cleveland Cavaliers in scoring in 2019-20 with 20.8 points per outing, is a score-first player, he showed growth as a passer as last season progressed.
Sexton had a better 4.3 assists per game in his last 15 outings leading into the novel coronavirus-induced hiatus/ultimately the end of last season for Cleveland. And his passing to Love, in particular, seemingly got better in the 2020 portion of the schedule.
I’d expect Sexton to improve in regards to his mid-post feeds to Love next season, and delivier those earlier in the shot clock, frankly. With Love’s capabilities in those situations, that often leads to quality decisions/offense if Love is doubled, too, and Sexton could get some looks right back following those initial passes from Kevin as well.
Also, in terms of the drive-and-kick sense, we should see Sexton be looking for Love a bunch in that realm.
Given how Love is fresh off hitting 37.4 percent of his career-high 7.0 three-point attempts in 2019-20, too, that’s a very wise decision, by and large, and we saw those more and more as year 2 for Collin wore on. Sexton had a solid chunk, with 38 assists to Love last season, per NBA.com’s shooting data.
We could very well see Sexton target Love coming around off-ball screens from seemingly Andre Drummond/Larry Nance Jr. to let it fly from the perimeter, too, for quick offense.
In the pick-and-roll game, I’d imagine we could definitely see some Sexton pick-and-pop deliveries if opposing bigs hedge a bit too much, which Love is more than capable of burying from deep.
To wrap it up from there, perhaps we could see Sexton in the secondary transition game, pull some plays back out and look for Love as a trailing three-point target as well.
In any case, looking at next season, the Sexton-Love duo should be all systems go, and create high quality opportunities for each other throughout games, which should aid the Cavs.