In his first season, Isaac Okoro had ups and downs for the Cleveland Cavaliers. Coming into the campaign, it was apparent that offensively, he was going to be somewhat raw.
That was admittedly how things played out for a good part of the season, too. On the year, in 32.4 minutes per game, he had 9.6 points per contest and hit only 29.0 percent of his three-point shot attempts.
In much of the first half of the year, and a bit after the All-Star break, Okoro did seem to be hesitant and fairly tentative on the offensive end. Now, part of that was there not being a ton of usage on-ball, and he didn’t come in as a polished catch-and-shoot player.
That was to be expected, as he hit just 28.6 percent from three in his lone collegiate season at Auburn. Fortunately though, there were flashes of hot shooting from Okoro and as the season wore on, particularly April-onward, there was more offense from Isaac.
He was seemingly more confident from that point on, and while injuries to say, the likes of Darius Garland in the closing batch of the campaign (ankle sprain) played some into it, Okoro did show more on-ball. In his last 12 games of 2020-21, he did have something to build on leading into the offseason as well, with 16.2 points per contest then.
On a positive note too, while there were some a number of tough matchups game-to-game for him, Okoro did hold his own defensively, even while often taking on the top perimeter scorer on other teams and/or top wings.
All things considered, also in a COVID-19-affected season, I thought Okoro did fine. So what’s fair to expect from him in Year 2, then?
Along those lines, here, we’ll touch on two realistic expectations for Isaac in 2021-22 for the Cavs.
We’ll get into #1 next.