Cavs: Why Darius Garland is likely CLE’s next max player

The Cleveland Cavaliers haven’t given out a max contract since they handed one out in the 2015 offseason, but Darius Garland has an excellent shot to be the first since Kevin Love it seems.

Darius Garland is having the breakout season that the Cavs and many it appears were expecting for this year, including reportedly 15 NBA executives. The way Garland is performing you can certainly expect the Cavaliers to extend him and give him a max contract in the next offseason. He’d be the first since Kevin Love in the summer of 2015 to get a 5-year deal of that variety.

Garland is likely to be the Cavs’ next max player it seems.

For the season, Garland is averaging 18.2 points, 6.8 assists, and 1.3 steals per game, while shooting 36.4 percent from three (on 7.4 attempts), and a solid 45 percent from the field overall. Plus, Garland keeps getting more comfortable and you can tell his confidence is growing, especially when you look at his 11 games in November.

Losing Collin Sexton was a gut punch for the Cavaliers. Garland and Evan Mobley are the main reasons why the Cavs got off to a 9-5 start though, and even with all the injuries, the Cavs are still 9-9, and if the season ended today they’d be in the play-in tourney. Still knowing the Cavs will be without that extra shot creator in Sexton, who can get buckets with ease at times for stretches, does definitely hurt, let alone for the rest of the season in Collin’s case.

The Cavs can over come it , but they’ll miss his scoring.

The Cavs needed Garland to step up in Sexton’s absence, and he has to a large extent though, to his credit. In the month of November (11 games), many of those without Sexton, Garland is averaging 20.4 points and 6.2 assists, and has shot 45.5 percent overall, including 37.5 percent from three, on 8.3 attempts per outing. And Garland is still only 21 years old as well.

The Cavs are also clearly a better team with Garland on the court, as opposed to when he’s off. Cleveland has a 108.0 offensive rating when Garland is on the court, but just a 94.6 rating when he’s off, per NBA.com stats. Regarding other key rotational contributors so far this season for Cleveland, only Mobley (3.5) and Ricky Rubio (3.4) have had better net ratings than Garland’s of 3.1 on the Cavs, too.

Garland obviously elevates all his teammates around him. The Cavaliers have been hit pretty hard with the injury bug this year, of course.  The Cavs have had to deal with losing Sexton for the season, Isaac Okoro has missed several games, Lauri Markkannen and Kevin Love have both missed a few weeks and the biggest blow of all has been losing the then-frontrunner for the Rookie of the Year in Evan Mobley.

But even with the loss of Mobley, Garland still has had the Cavs in games largely with his play. They had a chance to beat the Boston Celtics late, were right in both of the games against the Brooklyn Nets, and had a 13-point lead against the Golden State Warriors in the fourth until Stephen Curry went Stephen Curry on them.

Again Garland obviously elevates the level of play of his teammates, but his confidence continues to grow. When you look at Garland and his skill set a few things stick out, which is why you can see his path to stardom.

His ball handling is special, as having handles like Garland is elite and isn’t something easy to teach. His court vision is great, too, as is his ability as a shooter when you watch him on the court.  These are attributes/skills that you can see star qualities in Garland and things you just again, can’t teach. And though it’s not going to be at high volume compared to other shots, he has shown progress on the interior.

The one thing you can nitpick when it comes to Garland is one would want to see him get to the free throw line more often, however. In his last 11 games he’s getting to the free throw line 2.5 times per game. There’s no reason to believe he can’t eventually improve in that area, though, with his shooting abilities and handle.

Overall, when you factor in how the team is playing, how much he just makes everyone else better, the elite skill set/attributes he has in a number of areas, you’re finally starting to see it on the court that Garland seems to be likely Cleveland’s next max player.

And the worst thing about the Mobley injury was it happened when the Cavaliers faced a daunting schedule, in facing a good Celtics team again, championship-level teams like the Nets twice, the Warriors and now the Phoenix Suns next. Still when Mobley returns, Garland and the Cavs should still be in a good position when he gets back in there.

So all things considered, factoring all of this in I believe Garland has all the makings and talent to be a future star. Garland will likely get a 5-year max from the Cavs, at least in my opinion, and would be the first player to get that in a long time from Cleveland, and the way it’s going, deservedly so.