Taking a look at the Cavs Player of the Week for Jan. 25-31

Here, we’ll touch on how the Cleveland Cavaliers, from a player standpoint, looked in their previous week of games. That’s not including yesterday’s win over the Minnesota Timberwolves, in what was their second leg of a back-to-back with them, in what was a close win.

That was an entertaining one, but again, here, we’ll be looking back at the previous week’s slate of games for the Wine and Gold, for what it’s worth.

The Cavaliers struggled during that week, finishing 1-3. Their sole win came against the Detroit Pistons on Wednesday while their three losses came against the Los Angeles Lakers on Monday, New York Knicks on Friday, and Timberwolves on Sunday.

The game against the Lakers was a decent contest, until LeBron James did what he does, which included 46 points (including 21 in the fourth quarter), to go with eight rebounds and six assists. But that outing was an encouraging one, in particular, after the Cavs were bludgeoned by the Boston Celtics the day before on the road. Cleveland’s loss at the Timberwolves was a frustrating loss, though.

And for some reason barring a miraculous Andre Drummond performance, the Knicks have had our number this season.

So who was the Cav that really made their mark for this past week, then?

The Cavs Player of the Week for Jan. 25-31 was Darius Garland.

Darius Garland was the Cleveland Cavaliers player that took the cake regarding the Player of the Week for that slate of games from my perspective, with an honorable mention going to Drummond, who averaged 19.6 points and 17.5 rebounds. Those numbers are excellent but Garland’s bounce back edged it out.

Garland was out for an eight-game stretch due to a right shoulder sprain he suffered and returned to the starting lineup again this past week of Jan. 25-31, after easing his way back into play from the bench the previous week.

After missing what would be a few weeks and having Collin Sexton explode onto the scene, of which KJG’s Grant Puskar previously hit on, it was easy to put Garland’s successful season on the back burner a bit. But, Garland has made significant strides this season as a scorer and playmaker.

Garland averaged 16.5 points and 3.6 assists and shot seven-of-11 from three-point land on the week. His most notable performance was the loss to the Knicks where he scored 24 points, which was a career-high.

Darius has looked much more comfortable in his second professional season and has shown flashes of excellent playmaking abilities, something the Cavs have needed for some time. And him hitting 52.0 percent on catch-and-shoot three-point attempts, along with 39.1 percent of his pull-up triple attempts, both per NBA.com’s shot tracking data, this season, has been quite the start.

Now, we were alluding to the previous week more so here overall, albeit Garland’s 19-point, 11-assist performance on Monday was a notable one, too.

Clearly, his play when he’s been in there this season has led to plenty of reason for optimisim regarding the near future.