Cavs: Pull-up development is crucial for Isaac Okoro in near future

I’m not going to say that Isaac Okoro is polished offensively; he has a ways to go on that end of the floor. The rookie wing has had 8.1 points per outing thus far this season in 32.8 minutes per contest for the Cleveland Cavaliers, which isn’t suggesting he’s exactly filled it up generally.

As was expected, considering he hit only 28.6 percent from there in his lone collegiate season at Auburn, Okoro hasn’t been an efficient shooter from three-point range with Cleveland to this point. On 2.9 triple attempts per game, he’s hit 29.4 percent from range.

On catch-and-shoot three-point looks, the vast majority of his attempts, and on an overall frequency of 33.9 percent, Okoro’s hit only 28.6 percent of those, per NBA.com’s shot tracking data.

It’s clear that the catch-and-shoot game needs to get better moving forward for him to pay off for Darius Garland, Collin Sexton, Larry Nance Jr. and others. Although, Okoro has shown positive signs, in terms of having more confidence it appears of late, and him having hit 36.7 percent on corner 3s on the year has been somewhat of a plus that hopefully is something to build on.

Nonetheless, to me, while Okoro has shown when he’s looking to get downhill after closeouts/via drives, he can get to the cup and finish when he’s assertive, it’s apparent that he needs to have some of a pull-up to have looking onward from time to time.

For now/the rest of this season, I’d like to see him look to take on/initiate contact more so than perhaps navigating around it, although he does have good up-and-under capability. But here, we’ll hit on that pull-up point.

Pull-up development is crucial for Okoro for the Cavs in the near future.

At this point, it’s so early when it comes to the offensive end for Okoro, specifically from a shooting perspective. And to reiterate, I know he’s raw currently there.

Now, Isaac needs to improve his handle to fully take advantage of his 225-pound frame, but he’s still shown plenty of flashes of being an impactful driver in both settled situations and especially in transition.

That sort of thing has been nice to see, and though the stats don’t bear it out at the moment, he could be a decent ball-moving/secondary playmaking presence down the road. And he has hit some meaningful looks to cutters at times and is capable of hitting kickouts to Garland, Sexton and Dylan Windler, for example.

But again, to me, a key for Okoro in coming years is to develop a viable pull-up, at least after hard closeouts. And although it will take time, working on that especially hard in the upcoming offseason could pay dividends for him, to go with the handle.

Okoro has only attempted 0.7 pull-ups per game to go this point, of which has been a 9.3 percent frequency, and he’s had an effective field goal shooting clip of just 32.6 percent on those. That’s again according to NBA.com’s shot tracking data, for reference.

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Granted, I’m not going to grill Okoro on this, and I’m not saying I expected him to be at all a volume pull-up threat this season. Let’s not gloss over that this was the shortest turnaround for rookies in league history, too, given the COVID-19-impacted offseason/lack of offseason, really.

But to further drive it home here, it’s evident that if Isaac were to become more of a pull-up threat, and if he were to say attempt, even 2.0 pull-ups per game next season, for instance, and showed some viability in the mid-range, that’d be meaningful.

He has shown some ability to change speeds at times as a driver, and has shown nice body control, and has thrown down some big dunks this season when he’s made up his mind to initiate/play through contact. We do need to see him initiate/take on contact more consistently, though, to be fair.

That said, while the off-the-catch viability is an obvious thing, Okoro, more so looking onward, could really have things open up for him, if the pull-up game develops to be pretty viable, again, even in the mid-range area.

And with the tireless worker he reportedly he is, and Cleveland having an outstanding player development staff, I don’t think that in the near future for Isaac, who is just 19, is far-fetched.

Doing so would make Okoro, who has done typically a solid job defensively, even in often such tough matchups, and is a promising team defender, more of a contributor game-to-game at the other end.

Again, though, I’m not going to grill the kid here, even more so given the circumstances involving this season.