3 things Cavs fans should be looking forward to seeing in preseason

#2: Hopefully some progression from the Cavs’ young core

The Cavaliers are betting on their young core. They limited their potential offseason moves by essentially bringing on the Andre Drummond contract last season and were not able to add much of any significant pieces outside of the draft, which was expected.

If they are to have a successful season, the improvement and growth from players like Collin Sexton, Darius Garland, Kevin Porter Jr. and Dylan Windler is key. They’re all heading into their second season except Sexton, who’s heading into his third year.

Each of these players has both unique and similar reasons to believe they’ve gotten better. While all of them have had an extended period to heal and work on their craft, Sexton has already shown his drive to improve by doing so between seasons last year, and he led Cleveland in scoring in 2019-20 with 20.8 points per outing.

Garland, unfortunately, was injured in his last offseason and just seemed to never completely find a consistent rhythm, despite his clear skills with the ball. That likely played some into him having a somewhat underwhelming 12.3 points per game on only 40.1 percent shooting; though his passing did get better as last season wore on.

Porter Jr. had a solid coming-out party with 10.0 points, 3.2 rebounds and 2.2 assists per outing as a bench contributor. While still being a raw talent, he has shown plenty of glimpses of his high potential.

Lastly, Dylan Windler has yet to fully show how good he is on the court due to complications involving a stress reaction in his lower left leg during last season which didn’t allow him to play a game.

His shooting could be extremely useful for the team to spread the floor, though, and he seemingly made quite an impression as a shooter in the Cavs voluntary in-market bubble team workouts in late September.