Heading into his third season for the Cleveland Cavaliers, Darius Garland looks to have firmly established himself as the present and future at the starting 1 for the team.
Last year, he had a bounce-back campaign for the Cavs, in which he had 17.4 points and 6.1 assists per game, and that was nice to see for the youngster. He rebounded from a rookie season that was fairly underwhelming, because of a variety of factors.
In his second year, though, he looked to be a completely different player, which was encouraging for Cavaliers fans. The shiftiness, vision, pick-and-roll prowess, quickness and shooting from deep all played into him being a key bright spot for Cleveland.
But this coming season, him and Collin Sexton, objectively, do need to attempt more three-point shots game-to-game for the team. Fortunately, the Cavaliers are stressing for both to be taking more of those looks, which is nice to know, at least.
Additionally, while we’ll have to see it factor in for him game-to-game, and I’d imagine first some in preseason, Garland over the offseason has been working on extending his range.
With that in mind, and with how he knocked in 39.5 percent from deep last year, to go with his handle, I would like to see more transition threes from Garland in Year 3, and I’d expect those to come. That could help open up other areas of his game even more, also.
Cavs: Garland seems set to take transition threes more regularly in 2021-22.
It’s clear that the Cavaliers are stressing for the team in general to be shooting more threes, and the likes of Garland and Sexton, for instance, need to take more of those.
Garland attempted 4.9 per contest last season, and while I’d think that he’ll look to get to those more in set offense, and hopefully used some more off movement, I’d like to see him pull more in transition there.
Now, the team is looking to get more involved on the break throughout games, and Cavs head coach J.B. Bickerstaff recently stressed how he wants to see Isaac Okoro be more of a focal point in that realm, for example, including as a playmaker.
Circling back to Garland though, if he can take another step forward as a deep shooting presence, him getting to deep balls in the secondary transition game could stretch defenses more for stretches, and it could set him up more as a driver.
That’s both for creation for himself, a roller in Jarrett Allen/Evan Mobley and for other perimeter shooters from sprayouts coming off that if defenders start to press out more if Garland can have success.
Granted, I’m not suggesting that Garland should just be firing up shots and forcing it too often; that’s not the case, but to some degree, I do believe it could help open up things up for spurts/stretches as games progress. The volume was not necessarily high for transition deep balls, but last year, Garland did make strides as a transition player, and there were glimpses that were something to build on as a deep shooter in those instances.
He had an effective field goal shooting clip of 66.8 percent in transition, per Synergy Sports. And perhaps next season, him being more willing to fire from deep in secondary break situations, or at times off-ball in transition could be of a point of emphasis as a scorer for him, and could aid him as a driver from there.
So, of course I’m not discounting the playmaking element from him, but I’d expect that in Year 3, we could very well see DG look to get things going more as a deep shooter in secondary transition/early-clock situations.
That could be another way for Cleveland to manufacture threes, in a team sense, overall, and as we touched on, it could pay off for other areas of his game.