Cavs: 3 reasons Darius Garland should bounce back in year 2

Darius Garland had his share of struggles in year 1 for the Cleveland Cavaliers.

In his first season with the Cleveland Cavaliers, young guard Darius Garland came in with high expectations. Unfortunately, he had his ups and downs, and him hitting just 40.1 percent of his shots as a rookie was fairly underwhelming.

He mightily struggled defensively, albeit many young guards have their issues on that end of the floor. He had some problems getting a feel as a playmaker it seemed earlier on as well, and clearly, the adjustment with him and Collin Sexton together for considerable stretches led to often an uneven time for both.

That said, I give Garland some slack, because of how he only appeared in five games in his collegiate career at Vanderbilt due to a meniscus tear. He was reportedly still affected by that throughout his rookie it appeared, and a minor foot ailment didn’t help early on in his rookie year, either.

On the plus side, Garland had plenty of impressive flashes in year 1, and by and large, his playmaking feel/ability to create open looks was encouraging, from my perspective. And next season, I’d hope that Garland can replicate more of the 2020 passing feel/anticipation that he displayed more so in the 2020 portion of the schedule for Cleveland.

That was leading into the novel coronavirus-induced hiatus/ultimately the end of 2019-20 for the Cavs, and in those 26 games active for him, he had a better 5.1-to-2.6 assist-to-turnover ratio, as compared to 3.9-to-2.6 in that metric for the season.

Garland seemed to get more comfortable as a shooter as the season wore on as well, to some extent, and we saw that in the floater/step back game, for example.

In any case, while he didn’t have a particularly good year 1, Garland’s more than capable of bouncing back in year 2.

We’ll highlight three reasons why that should happen for him/the Cavs here.

We’ll get going with reason #1.