Cavs: Darius Garland’s catch-and-shoot game is taking off

Darius Garland‘s change of speeds this season for the Cleveland Cavaliers has enabled him to get to his sweet spots more often than not on-ball, and in the pick-and-roll, that’s led to him getting off his floaters, and led to lob deliveries.

Granted, Garland hasn’t been nearly as reliant on his floaters in the last five-to-six games or so, though, and while in the past six outings, he’s shot 30.6 percent from three-point range, it’s been encouraging to see him shoot with more volume from there.

He’s still had a few key stretches in regards to notable three-point shooting in games in that span, too, for what it’s worth, and has hit some to either ignite runs, or keep the Cavs in a nice spot management-wise.

Garland, who had a career-high 25 points in Cleveland’s overtime W at the Philadelphia 76ers, albeit thanks to a 11 points in OT, had two important triples in that one on five attempts.

And he had a flurry of three three-point shots go down on consecutive possessions to really put the Cavaliers in a great spot in a win over the Houston Rockets on Wednesday, which was terrific to see from a confidence standpoint.

Garland’s catch-and-shoot touch has been on-point this season, in that sense, which has been a particularly promising development and hopefully can continue in the season’s second half.

DG’s catch-and-shoot game is taking off for the Cavs.

It’s not like Garland’s catch-and-shoot play was necessarily a knock against him last season, as he hit a pretty healthy 39.2 percent of his catch-and-shoot three-point attempts, per NBA.com’s shot tracking data.

Garland, though the pull-up three-point shooting hit rate was only 31.7 percent, and this season that’s at 31.4 percent, was clearly on-pace to surpass Collin Sexton’s rookie made threes record (119), as he had 105 made through the season’s 65 games. Albeit the season would then be on hiatus, and with the Cavs not having been an Orlando-area bubble squad, Cleveland’s season ended out.

But for Garland, anyway, his catch-and-shoot game is truly taking off in Year 2. Thus far, on a frequency of 17.3 percent (2.5 attempts per game), Garland’s knocked down a sizzling 44.6 percent of his catch-and-shoot triple attempts, again, per NBA.com’s shot tracking data.

He’s been able to knock down spot-up looks off of ball-swings, but lately, he’s seemingly benefited from give-and-go looks from Jarrett Allen deliveries. That’s been similar to that sort of thing for Dylan Windler, for instance, whose built up some momentum heading into the second half, and Garland has gotten some occasional relocation looks.

It’d be nice to see Garland have some more relocation catch-and-shoot looks in the second half of the season for the Cavaliers, too, given how he’s been in a heck of a groove as a catch-and-shoot guy. For Garland, he’s hit 40.3 percent of his shot attempts from 25-29 feet out, per NBA.com’s shooting data, too, which has been better than last season by a few percentage points, even.

Moreover, while I Darius needs to get his pull-up three looks up, as he needs to keep establishing that threat to aid other areas of his game and help generate looks for his teammates from defenses helping, the catch-and-shoot production has been impressive.

His deep range has been on display, and I’d imagine as the season progresses, we’ll continue to see him get more catch-and-shoot looks off of movement as well.

Overall, it’s been a pleasure to see Garland, whose had 5.8 assists per outing this season, improve as a playmaker, and also to have seen his on-ball scoring polish get better.

But the catch-and-shoot game for DG is truly taking off, too, which will only make him more dangerous for the Wine and Gold.