Cavs: 3 competitors of Darius Garland for Most Improved

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OG Anunoby, Toronto Raptors. Photo by Alex Goodlett/Getty Images /

The Cleveland Cavaliers don’t bring home many awards. They’ve never had a player win the Most Improved Player award, nor Sixth Man of the Year. No Cavs player has brought home Defensive Player of the Year. If you take LeBron James and his many awards out of the equation, Kyrie Irving winning Rookie of the Year and All-Star Game MVP is just about it.

Darius Garland will hope to change that this season by winning the NBA’s Most Improved Player award. Evan Mobley is facing an uphill battle to compete for Rookie of the Year, and you need to be an All-Star to have a shot at All-Star Game MVP, but Most Improved is an award within the grasp of a Cavaliers player this season.

Darius Garland is set up to take a huge leap forward this year and win Most Improved Player.

Garland is young, improving and already has narrative buzz. His presence on the Team USA Select Team this past summer speaks to a belief in his upside from around the basketball world. We wrote on his path to the award last week.

Let’s turn from his lane to view the runners on either side of him. Which other players are in contention for the award? This is a difficult one to nail down in the preseason because there is an element of surprise baked into the award, but we can still identify certain players that seem to fit the criteria, similar to Garland. First we should eliminate a few of the league’s other candidates.