Cavs: Team USA guards should show importance of 3s for Darius Garland

It’s difficult to be too critical of Darius Garland‘s play from this now-past season for the Cleveland Cavaliers. Yes, his first year was underwhelming, but he wasn’t himself/at his best, because of a variety of reasons.

In Year 2 though, he looked like a different player, and ended up having a bounce-back campaign. Garland had 17.4 points and 6.1 assists per contest, and knocked in 39.5 percent of his three-point attempts.

Taking that sort of thing into consideration, it’s understandable why Garland is a member of the Team USA Select squad, of whom is currently training with/scrimmaging some against the Team USA squad that’s set to play in the Summer Olympics in Tokyo.

Garland’s been able to get some exposure to Team USA guards such as Damian Lillard, Bradley Beal and Zach LaVine seemingly, all of whom are big-time players. And in a general sense, it’s a plus that Garland will get some playing time with the likes of Tyler Herro, Saddiq Bey, PJ Washington and others on the Select Team and/or get in some drill work with the aforementioned guys.

One thing, in particular, for Garland did seem to jump out to me in getting some exposure to those Team USA guards though, and that’s how crucial three-point looks are for them/their success. That’s something I’d imagine that could resonate with him, too.

Cavs: The Team USA guards should further emphasize the importance of threes for Garland.

Not including Devin Booker and Jrue Holiday in this case, with both competing in the NBA Finals, all of the US guards, while the others besides Dame are naturally 2s, it’s still clear that they are high volume three-point shooting players.

And while in a general sense Garland being around Lillard, Beal and LaVine should aid him as a player just overall for these handful of days of training, one thing I’d think he could take from their games is how they’re able to generate of their own in-rhythm three-point looks, but also some off movement.

All three of those guys are three-level scorers, and elite ones, obviously, and I’m not discounting that. All of them get their of production from deep range though, and just that sort of mindset could pay off for Garland, who, along with Collin Sexton, the Cavs are reportedly trying to stress to get up more threes game-to-game next season.

Now clearly, Garland won’t be putting up 10.5 triples per game from here, especially with his playmaking duties for other guys for the Cavaliers, but with him hopefully able to pick the brain of a guy like Dame, perhaps he could pick up some ways to generate more triples for himself. That’s whether that be some slight adjustments to look for more pull-up threes/threes off-the-bounce, which he seemingly took more of and had success with post-All-Star last season, or for how to manipulate defenders off-movement, for instance.

That’s the sort of thing I’m getting at here. Point being, Garland had the best month of his NBA career in April before he eventually suffered an ankle sprain, and didn’t play for most of the closing batch of games for Cleveland.

In that month, he had 20.5 points and 6.3 assists per outing, and hit 38.5 percent of his then-6.4 triple attempts per outing.

So if he can hover around 6.5-7.0 deep attempts per game next season, that could really bode well for him and help open up more playmaking opportunities for himself in the process with how Garland has big-time range. That’s both off-the-catch and with his handle, off-the-bounce.

Circling back for a quick second to close though, I would think that this Team USA Select run and/or exposure training with/playing some against those Team USA guards, who are big-time players, could reiterate the importance of shooting more threes for Garland looking onward.

That’s at least one of the key takeaways from that exposure I’d assume could be the case for DG. Albeit the experience overall has likely been invaluble anyway, in fairness.