Darius Garland, the Cleveland Cavaliers rising star guard, had many shining moments this past year that give you and I, as fans of the Cavs, a lot to be looking forward to next season.
Garland just finished hooping it up on the USA Men’s Select Team that helped the USA Men’s National Team prepare for the upcoming Summer Olympic Games in Tokyo, Japan. With this additional experience and training, I’m excited to see how far this kid can go next year.
People talk about ceilings for various players all the time in the sphere of basketball discussions. How high is Garland’s ceiling? I think he’s more of the “sky’s the limit,” kind of player and his importance to this Cavaliers team into the future is huge. But before we tackle that next topic let’s review this past year.
There were several highlights throughout this past season for Garland. I’m not necessarily a points guy and don’t just believe that the more points you score the better the player you are. However, he did have a stretch in April when he scored 20 or more points in six straight games. Garland increased his point average steadily as the season progressed, too, and his deep shooting was on display even more so post-All-Star.
Now, I don’t see Garland scoring huge-point games like 30 or 40 points a lot yet in his future but I certainly believe he’ll average over 20 points next season. This past season his point average was at 17.4, a significant increase from his rookie campaign at 12.3.
The other, just as important, stat line I believe for Garland is how he helps manage games and distributes the ball to his teammates. His assists average went up from 4.9 to 6.1 this past season.
With that said, let’s look back at the five best games I think Garland had this past season. The only criteria for the games selected, which are in no particular ranking order, was that the game also had to be a win for the Cavs.