Darius Garland, the Cleveland Cavaliers dynamic guard, will be entering his third season with the Wine and Gold. Recently in an article/report published by Hoops Hype’s Michael Scotto, 15 NBA executives recently voted Garland as their lead breakout candidate for the season. That’s in relation to him having the highest percentage of the vote, when asked who their top three breakout candidates are for 2021-22.
Garland’s talents are in the early stages and that progress we are all anticipating happening this next season won’t be a mirage. I’d be very surprised if Garland doesn’t have his most successful season yet. The Cavs have a plethora of young talent and I believe Garland is at the top of the Cavaliers roster as for his upside so expecting better days ahead for the team is undoubtedly a reality.
It frustrates me when I read other opinions of Garland that aren’t expecting much more improvement and then it comes down to personal opinion on whose ceiling is higher. For example, comparing other Cavs guard Collin Sexton to Garland is usually the go-to for some.
But, I don’t believe that’s a fair comparison because they are different types of players. I believe Garland is more valuable to the Wine and Gold than Sexton in the end because of the things I believe Garland has more talent with.
It’s great that Sexton can score and he led the Cavs with a 24 points a game as he did a year ago. But Garland has other parts to his game that are more important to the team winning more consistently. When Garland is distributing the ball, getting steals and shooting the ball well from three-point land then the Cavaliers will be winners.
Garland led the team in assists per game average, steals per game average and three-point shooting average a year ago. I’m expecting that to occur again this upcoming season and if he can improve even more on his points per game average there’s no reason to believe he won’t have that star-studded breakout year that many NBA executives are already projecting.
With that in mind, here, we’ll highlight three reasons why Garland is guaranteed to have a breakout Year 3 for the Cavs.
The first reason he’s guaranteed to have a breakout campaign is the aforementioned passing abilities.