Cavs: 2 realistic expectations for Matthew Dellavedova in 2020-21

#2: For the Cavs, Delly will again be a good reserve playmaker

Dellavedova’s not going to be playing a whole bunch of minutes, when it comes to most occasions I would think, albeit when he’s in there, he’ll get the ball hopping.

As we again noted, Delly had 7.9 assists per-36 minutes last season, so even with the shooting woes, when Delly’s in games, the offense regularly generates good looks via ball-swings, lobs and/or hitting cutters.

In reserve minutes spelling Garland/Porter to an extent maybe, whether he’s with Porter or not, Dellavedova could give Cleveland’s offense a ball-movement jolt for stretches/or at least spurts.

The relatively minimal minutes-share played into it, sure, but Cleveland had their best assist rate in relation to regular rotation players from an on-floor metric perspective when Delly was on in 2019-20 at 64.8 percent.

And realistically among regular rotation guys, Cleveland’s on-floor true shooting rate with Delly on was 55.9 percent, which wasn’t much less than Kevin Love’s at 56.2 percent; again, though, the sample size could’ve played into that for Dellavedova to some degree.

Moreover, while I know Dellavedova is more so going to be a mentorship/locker room presence next season, when he is in games, even if it generally is more via spot minutes, to a large extent, he’ll get guys in the right spots.

His passion vision, creativity and timing for hitting cutters such as Cedi Osman or Okoro and/or bigs hustling down the floor in secondary transition such as JaVale McGee or Larry Nance Jr. will be infectious and give Cleveland energy.

Dellavedova’s re-signing, to reiterate, was a wise move by the Cavs, and I’m glad he’s back.