3 Cleveland Cavaliers gifts that will keep on giving in 2020-21

The Cleveland Cavaliers 2020-21 season began on Wednesday, and that brought us joy.

2020-21 play for the Cleveland Cavaliers began on Wednesday, in what was a win over the Charlotte Hornets.

The Wine and Gold showed positive signs, and even more so with how they haven’t played in regular season game action since March due to novel coronavirus concerns/them not having been an Orlando-area bubble team.

Anyway, with the Cavs back playing, though, that’s seemingly quite a gift in itself. Frankly, their extended layoff felt like nine-and-a-half years, not nine-and-a-half months.

And while we’re on the subject of gifts, given how Friday is Christmas Day, a few gifts, in particular, come to mind for me in regards to this season.

Here, we’ll highlight three Cavs gifts that’ll keep on giving in 2020-21.

The first is in relation to third-year guard Collin Sexton, who has proven to be a big-time scorer.

Cavs gift #1: Sexton’s continued growth as a big-time scorer

Sexton led the Cavs in scoring this past season with 20.8 points per game, and the Young Bull was on a real tear in what was ultimately the closing stretch of Cleveland’s season.

In Collin’s last 25 games of Year 2, he had 24.2 points per contest on 50.3 percent shooting overall, and hit 45.2 percent of his three-point attempts. Thanks in large part to him demonstrating a newfound ability to change speeds off-the-bounce, that aided Sexton in getting more separation in settled offense as compared to his first season.

And it’s still going to take some more time to adjustment, but Sexton’s chemistry with Darius Garland, and alongside other key pieces such as Kevin Love and Kevin Porter Jr. some did improve.

Sexton showed little-to-no hesitation in hoisting catch-and-shoot three-point looks last season, too, which only helped him more so as a pull-up and driving threat as the year progressed.

So in a bucket-getting sense, even though Sexton dealt with/could be still recovering from a minor ankle sprain he suffered in camp which seemingly limited him some, and Sexton reportedly had struggles before that, even, he’ll be just fine. He had 27 points on nine-of-16 shooting in Wednesday’s W, too.

Looking at what will continue to come in 2020-21, based on the growth he showed in Year 2 as a bucket-getter, Sexton should be poised for another step forward in Year 3. Rest assured, his big-time scoring for the Cavs will be a gift that will absolutely keep on giving.

Plus, it was nice to see Sexton show some encouraging passing signs leading into the hiatus; he had a better 4.2 assists per contest in his last 15 games of 2019-20.

Moving along, we’ll take a look at Cavs gift #2.