Cavs: Darius Garland must take another step forward regarding FTs

Heading into his third season, Darius Garland seems poised for a big year. Last season, he appeared to have solidified himself as a crucial player for the Cleveland Cavaliers, and had a bounce-back campaign with 17.4 points and 6.1 assists per contest.

Along with that, he knocked in 39.5 percent of his three-point attempts, and the on-ball abilities, shiftiness, creativity and passing vision from him were on display from him throughout that second year. It was a relief for many, as because of a variety of factors, he had a fairly underwhelming Year 1.

This upcoming season, while his and Collin Sexton‘s play has resulted in a mixed bag in preseason so far, largely, it is preseason and Cleveland has some new pieces. I’m going to read too much into it, either way, and I do expect him and Sexton to pick things up.

In his third season, we should see Garland take another step forward, I’d think, as a lead playmaker, and hopefully as a scorer/shooter.

Along those lines, it’s good to know that Garland was working on extending his shooting range over the offseason, and I’d like to see him keep improving on his past season from three in 2021-22. I do believe we’ll see that from him, too, as Cleveland is reportedly stressing for him and Sexton to be taking more deep balls this season.

That said, it is still apparent that Garland needs to build on his past season, in relation to generating more free throws game-to-game for himself.

Cavs: Garland must take another step forward regarding free throws this season.

Garland is not going to be a player that’s going to generate nearly the free throws of say, Sexton, throughout games generally.

Last year, he averaged 2.4 per contest, and had a free throw rate of 16.5 percent. For comparison’s sake, the league average for free throw rate was 24.7 percent in 2020-21, according to Basketball Reference.

Garland did show progress last season in that area, however, particularly post-All-Star break. Then, he had 3.0 free throws per outing, and seemed to be drawing more whistles from either pump fakes before perimeter shots, or from change-of-pace keeping opponents off balance on drives.

There were still too many instances last year, though, where Garland appeared to not look comfortable generating whistles when the possibilities seemed there, and he’d avoid contact, which didn’t help his chances converting.

Now, I’m going to suggest that was all the time, and Garland’s craftiness and quickness, to go with the pick-and-roll passing he displayed helped him make strides as a finisher in Year 2 overall.

Nonetheless, in his third season, even with him getting to the line more post-All-Star last season, it’s still key for him to continue to make further progress on-ball to show more willingness to initiate contact inside, as that’d make him more difficult to account for.

That would lead to him getting more easy buckets, essentially, in doing so, for one, and it’d help him as a playmaker with opposing rotators maybe expecting shots more, and he could have less potential turnovers on kickouts out of those situations. Those have happened at times with opponents seemingly expecting those passes when he’s near the basket, even while I can understand those and they can lead to great looks for others.

In any case, though threes will be a point of emphasis for DG, along with him continuing to keep progressing as a playmaker, it is paramount that he takes another step forward in regards to getting to the line more. That’s been something of note thus far in preseason games, frankly.

He’s on the thinner side, and is not nearly as put-together as Sexton or Ricky Rubio, but it’d be meaningful for him to at least have 3.5-plus free throw attempts per contest. And him building on his efforts in that realm post-All-Star from Year 2 would indicate that.

Needless to say, I’ll be keeping an eye on that development for him in Year 3/looking onward.