Cleveland Cavaliers: Grading the Damyean Dotson deal

Damyean Dotson should be a nice Cleveland Cavaliers bench option.

After the Cleveland Cavaliers acquired backup 5 JaVale McGee and a future second-round pick via trade with the Los Angeles Lakers on Sunday, they added two other players to their rotation on Monday.

The Cavs and Matthew Dellavedova agreed on a re-signing via one-year, minimum deal, of which you can view the reported details about here.

Plus, earlier on Monday, Cleveland reportedly agreed on a two-year, $4 million deal with Damyean Dotson, who should help the Cavs’ shooting efforts. In this case, we’re going to hone in on Dotson, who was an unrestricted free agent due to the New York Knicks not extending him a qualifying offer (which would’ve made him restricted).

So how’d the Cavs make out with this signing, then?

Dotson could be a productive rotational shooter for the Cavs, and we’ll hit on how they graded out here.

It’s apparent that for Cleveland, this signing was mostly predicated on Dotson’s shooting abilities, primarily off-the-catch, in a bench role. In his past two seasons with the New York Knicks, who drafted Dotson in the second round in 2017, he knocked in 36.6 percent of his 4.2 three-point attempts per contest.

Dotson’s minutes-share declined from 27.5 in 2018-19 to 17.4 per game last season with the arrival of RJ Barrett, but when he was on the floor, Dotson did still make his presence felt as an off-the-catch shooter mostly.

That was via spot-ups and most notably, off movement, and I’d think that Dotson could bring pop in bench minutes as a shooter, coming around screens set by the likes of Andre Drummond, JaVale McGee and/or Larry Nance Jr.

He should knock in his share of looks when he’s out there from spot-ups after drive-and-kicks from Darius Garland, Collin Sexton, Kevin Porter Jr. and Isaac Okoro, too, though.

Conversely, on-ball, I’m not expecting a whole lot here from Dotson, which is plenty fine, frankly. But him hitting 58.1 percent of his step back attempts last season, per NBA.com’s shooting data, was impressive, anyhow. So we could see those occasionally at times, I’d assume.

Shifting gears from there, we’ll briefly touch on the defensive end for a bit.

I wouldn’t expect Dotson to be a key on-ball perimeter defender against guards/wings for Cleveland, but he is competent in his closeouts as a team defender/rotator to shooters, and he competes on that end.

Again, though, I’m not going to say that Dotson’s going to be an impact defender on the wing. However, he gives great effort in that regard, and perhaps the likes of Okoro, Drummond and McGee could help him to some extent.

Okay, so let’s get to the grade then for this Cleveland Cavaliers Dotson signing, shall we?

I’m going with a B for the Cavs here.

With this Dotson signing being a team-friendly deal, and him projecting to be a productive rotational perimeter shooter for the Cavaliers, a B seems fair to me.

The knocks here, though, seem to be that I’m unsure how competent Dotson can be on-ball defensively, and does he take valuable minutes away from Porter and/or potentially Dylan Windler at the 2?

Nonetheless, I’m not going to say I’m completely pumped about this Dotson two-year deal, but for seemingly a reserve 2/3 option that is a depth piece, I understand where the Wine and Gold were coming from. And as an update from Tuesday, per a report from Cleveland.com’s Chris Fedor, the second year of Dotson’s deal is non-guaranteed, which made this even more team-friendly for Cleveland.

Dotson as predominantly an off-ball player could feasibly fit in pretty seamlessly on the offensive end, too, with a number of Cavs players.

What the minutes-share looks like for him will be something to keep an eye on.