Damyean Dotson projects as a rotational shooter for the Cleveland Cavaliers.
On Monday, to go with the re-signing of Matthew Dellavedova, the Cleveland Cavaliers also signed Damyean Dotson. The two sides agreed on a two-year, $4 million deal, with the second year non-guaranteed, per a report from Cleveland.com’s Chris Fedor, and Dotson looks to be a bench contributor for Cleveland.
He was an unrestricted free agent due to the New York Knicks, the club he played his first three NBA seasons for, not extending Dotson a qualifying offer.
For the Wine and Gold, Dotson should aid Cleveland’s shooting efforts. He’s a floor spacing presence and is more than capable of knocking down catch-and-shoot looks off of movement as well.
In his rotational burn with the Cavs, he won’t be a key on-ball player offensively, but that’s just fine alongside pieces such as Collin Sexton, Darius Garland (seemingly staggered), Kevin Porter Jr., Isaac Okoro and/or Dylan Windler. Dotson should help open up the floor, too.
Dotson should be a seamless fit on the Cavs.
Dotson is not going to be a consistent on-ball scorer for the Cavaliers, or at least one that would likely be featured in that way/in pick-and-roll often, I wouldn’t assume. His shooting off-the-catch should project him to be a seamless fit with a number of Cavs players, though.
Dotson hitting 36.8 and 36.2 percent of his three-point attempts the past two seasons with the Knicks, on a volume of 4.7 and 3.4 attempts per outing was impressive. That was with not a ton of spacing/capable perimeter shooters around him, frankly.
But again with him likely being more so an off-ball player that will get his looks primarily off-the-catch/off-movement, he should be mesh well with key Garland, KPJ, Kevin Love, Larry Nance Jr. and Windler, for instance. I’d put Okoro in that realm, too.
Dotson hit 38.9 percent of his catch-and-shoot triple attempts last season, per NBA.com’s shot tracking data, which on a Knicks team that was largely devoid of key floor spacers, was noteworthy. And pieces such as Love, Garland, Sexton and Windler should definitely aid Dotson in that realm, along with Collin Sexton as well.
In the off-ball screen sense, Dotson should benefit from screens set by the likes of Andre Drummond, the recently-acquired JaVale McGee (via trade with the Los Angeles Lakers) and/or Nance, too. Along with that, those three players’ impact as rollers in sequences with Garland, Okoro, KPJ and at times with Dellavedova should play into Dotson getting spot-ups, coupled with the off-screen/off-movement game.
In any case, while we’ll have to see as far the minutes-share, of which he played 17.4 per outing last season (largely due to RJ Barrett’s presence) with New York, Dotson should be a nice depth piece for the Cavaliers.
That’d seem to be mostly in minutes at the 2 I would imagine for his off-ball/off-movement shooting presence, and could be a solid backcourt partner with Garland/Sexton staggered. The same could go for some stretches with Porter at the 1, and with Okoro/Cedi Osman/Windler at the 3, for example. Dotson is a timely cutter, too, and just moves so well without the ball to create opportunities for himself in settled situations, similarly to Windler.
Now, I’m not suggesting that Dotson can’t create some looks for himself, as he is able to do that via step backs/pull backs at times, which makes closing out to him more difficult.
But in a general sense, I think it’s meaningful for Cleveland that they picked up, via team-friendly deal, a quality depth/shooting piece in Dotson that doesn’t need the ball in his hands to initiate for himself all that much to have an impact.
Defensively, while he’s not a player that is a stopper, I wouldn’t say, he is fairly competent on-ball at 6-foot-5, 210 pounds and from an off-ball perspective, his effort does stand out.
Dotson should give the Cavaliers and Wine and Gold head coach J.B. Bickerstaff productive minutes off the bench I would think, and he’ll provide energy.
Him being primarily an off-ball/off-movement contributor makes it appear to me that he should be a seamless fit overall, too, to further drove that home.