Cavs: FA Garrison Mathews could bring shooting pop off bench

Mathews would bring true shooting pop off the Cavs bench

To echo our own Josh Cornelissen’s point, Mathews could greatly help the Cavs from a rotational shooting perspective. Cleveland was last in the NBA in three-point shooting hit rate last season, 28th in three-point attempts per outing and second-last in triples made per game.

That’s where Mathews could help the Wine and Gold, as he is a polished movement shooter, and feasibly in stretches at the 2 and 3, could knock down some threes at a respectable clip. Mathews hit 38.4 percent of his 3.1 attempts in 16.2 minutes per game for the Wiz last season, and in a four-year career at Lipscomb, knocked down 37.4 percent of his 7.2 attempts per game from three.

Clearly, the Cavs need to be looking to add knockdown perimeter shooting threats, and Mathews could be a potential upgrade over Damyean Dotson, whose deal is non-guaranteed next season and frankly, shouldn’t be back.

Additionally, Mathews could be more reliable than say, Dylan Windler, who has only appeared in 31 games through two seasons thus far due to unfortunate injury struggles.

Mathews could end up filling in some at the 3, as an alternative as well, and with Cedi Osman‘s inconsistencies last season (just 30.6 percent from three) and defensive limitations, if Mathews perhaps made him/Windler expendable, so be it.

The Lipscomb product has again been a two-way player for the Wizards the past two seasons, but he started in 24 games with last year, and was a meaningful shooter that did make his presence felt defensively, and could firmly establish himself in Cleveland’s rotation.