Deadly December: These 2 Cavs are scorching hot from 3

In case you were unaware, the upstart Cleveland Cavaliers are taking the league by storm recently, as the Wine and Gold have won seven of nine, in which they’ve had four and three-game win streaks. That’s been a great response to a five-game losing streak, which was somewhat due to injury. Both teams were on the second leg of a back-to-back on Saturday, but the Cavaliers got the job done either way 117-103, thanks to an 81-point first half.

Props to the Kings for making it interesting, particularly in the fourth quarter, when they got the game to single digits, but the Cavs eventually pushed through. It was Cleveland’s fifth game in seven days, with this past Sunday’s matinee close loss to the Utah Jazz in mind, for context.

Largely because of the work of their 4/5 duo in Evan Mobley and Jarrett Allen, and others such as Isaac Okoro and Ricky Rubio, the Cavaliers have been stingy on the defensive end for much of the season, for one.

Cleveland has the league’s third-best defensive rating this season, and even guys such as Lauri Markkanen, thanks to his length, and Kevin Love, similarly to Rubio in the reserve standpoint, have helped out, to a degree.

That said, as the Cavaliers have gotten much healthier and moved past COVID-19 health and safety protocols/illness absences, the offense has really been clicking. The lobs/interior feeds to Jarrett Allen and Evan Mobley will be there, sure, but what’s been refreshing to see is how Cleveland has gotten rolling from three-point land, in playing off that.

I know there will be some streakiness involved; even still, among NBA teams in the last 10 games, the Cavs are fourth in three-point shooting hit rate at 39.5 percent and have made the ninth-most triples per game in that span at 13.2. Furthermore, in December, the Cavs are #4 in three-point shooting hit rate at 40.5 percent and they’re 10th in made threes per outing in that stretch.

And in that stretch, while I’m not discounting the team efforts and ball movement, two Cavs, in particular, have really been lighting it up from three in December. I was close to saying three, but we’re going with two.

With that in mind, we’ll shout out those two Cavs players here.

The first of those that’s been killing it from deep has been Darius Garland, who is taking that proverbial next step.