Cavs: Dylan Windler has lofty goals, but he seems to be in right place

Heading into formally this third season, it’s difficult to know exactly what to expect from Dylan Windler for the Cleveland Cavaliers.

As the Wine and Gold faithful is fully aware, he hasn’t been available regularly in his two seasons to this point. His rookie campaign was wiped out because of injury, and last season, even in a COVID-19 affected year, he was active in only 31 games.

His de facto rookie season was ultimately cut short due to knee surgery to address “ongoing tendinopathy concerns,” which was again a rough break for the rotational wing.

Fortunately, it appears that Windler should be ready to roll for preseason action, which begins on Oct. 5 at the Chicago Bulls. Windler’s knee has been feeling good, and he was reportedly participating in voluntary scrimmaging the past few weeks prior to the beginning of training camp, per Chris Fedor of Cleveland.com. Camp began on Tuesday.

We’ll have to see how Windler looks in preseason and hopefully, if he can establish a rhythm, he can get off to a nice start this upcoming season, I’d think in rotational 2/3 minutes.

Now, there were flashes from him last year, but the lack of rhythm for real stretches of say, six-to-seven spans was not seemingly there. The injury bug didn’t help, either. On the year, he had 5.2 points in 16.5 minutes per outing, of which he hit 33.8 percent from three-point range.

The shooting potential is there for him, though, and Windler did connect on 40.6 percent of his three-point attempts in a four-year collegiate career at Belmont. He also had 21.3 points per contest as a senior, and hit 3.0 of his 7.1 triple attempts per outing then, a 42.9 percent clip.

Plus, throughout his career there, while it was not nearly NBA competition, he did show good timing in reading the ball off the glass, and his rebounding positioning was on display, as he had 7.8 boards per game with the Bruins. He had 10.8 per game in that senior year, too.

Now, as far as next season, it’s somewhat uncertain as to what we can anticipate from him game-to-game. But for Windler, he has does have a few lofty goals, and one, in particular, jumps out; both of these came via Evan Dammarell of Fear The Sword and the “Locked On Cavs” podcast.

Cavs: This is lofty stuff from Windler, but he seems to be in the right place heading into Year 3.

Simply put, Windler being able to hit the 50-40-90 club would be a heck of a feat. That’s even more so with the majority of his shots seemingly set to come from three, I’d think, with his bench role set to be as a movement shooter/floor spacer, I’d assume.

Although in a general sense, it’s good to know that Windler is in the right place ahead of his third season, which is, admittedly a crucial year for his outlook.

He’s had a really rough time staying healthy in his first two seasons, and objectively hasn’t, but these comments from him, also via Dammarell, do make me optimistic that he should be able to contribute meaningfully in 2021-22.

I get that the Windler shooting potential has not materialized nearly enough for him to have been considered an impact player to this point.

That’s just how it’s been; I’m not suggesting otherwise.

But we again have seen flashes of the deep range he displayed, both off-the-catch via ball-swings/spot-ups and off movement/screens at Belmont. In his last season there, he did place in the 94th percentile in catch-and-shoot situations in the halfcourt, too, per Synergy Sports.

Of course, we’ll have to see Windler remain available, and establish himself well enough early on when the chances do arise for him to have a shot at meeting these lofty goals for himself for his third season. That’s if there’s enough meaningful usage for that to be relevant, clearly.

It’s encouraging that Windler is in the right place mentally and physically ahead of this coming season, though, and if he’s able to get things going, the 25-year-old wing can still be a solid bench contributor. I firmly believe that still; however, he’ll have to prove it this go-round.