Don’t look now, but Cavs wing Isaac Okoro is improving offensively

The Cleveland Cavaliers are in the midst of a post-LeBron James resurgence and have seen numerous breakouts and growth from a number of players on the roster. Darius Garland and Jarrett Allen made the All-Star game. Evan Mobley would seem to be the odds-on favorite at this point for the Rookie of the Year award while being a defensive menace. Collin Sexton appeared to be improving in a number of areas in limited action despite his counting stats but perhaps the most interesting development trends occurring amongst such a young team center on one Isaac Okoro.

Entering the season as a backup after starting all 67 of his appearances his rookie year, Okoro was quickly elevated to the rank of starter once more thanks or no thanks to the unfortunate injury to Sexton. However, he didn’t exactly return to familiar territory as he would end up taking over for the Alabama product at shooting guard instead of the small forward position where he spent most of his rookie season playing.

That said, it’s not as if we hadn’t seen Okoro thriving there in the past. Perhaps the best offensive stretch of his career came in the final month of the 2020-21 campaign in which he started numerous games at the 2-guard and found himself averaging 16.6 points, 4.3 rebounds and 3.0 assists, with shooting splits of 42.1/30.2/73.2 over a span of 9 games.

While the obvious caveats apply such as that being such a small sample size, the Cavs had no reason to believe that Okoro couldn’t replicate a similar level of performance if given another opportunity.

Don’t look now, but Okoro is improving for the Cavs.

Although he hasn’t necessarily exploded like some have wished he would’ve in the absence of Sexton, he has shown signs of growth in a multitude of areas. Take his perimeter shooting for instance, through 55 appearances, Okoro had completed 32.4 percent of his looks from range, albeit with a lower volume (2.5 3PA) as he is rarely a top option within the offense on a night-to-night basis.  Okoro missed all 3 of his deep attempts on Friday in a thrilling overtime win over the Nuggets, but the progress is there.

He’s also managed to improve his free throw percentage as well, converting 79.4 percent of his opportunities from the line on a slight increase in volume (2.5 FTA this season, 2.3 last year) compared to his rookie campaign. His offensive improvements were on display in Cleveland’s near-comeback over the Philadelphia 76ers in a close loss on Wednesday too, and he’s had steady growth since December (this didn’t include Friday’s game).

His post All-Star break returns have been even more encouraging as through 12 games his shooting splits are 47.0/36.0/83.8 while contributing 9.8 PPG. You would like to see him take more shots but completing 36.0 percent of his three-point attempts is a sign of serious improvement in an area that the Cavs coaching staff surely can appreciate. Ditto for his free throw percentage.

It has been very interesting to see just how exactly he is getting the job done though, considering he’s been assisted on 93.3 percent of his three-point makes and 76.6 percent of his overall field goals made, per NBA.com’s shooting data. It’s safe to say that he is still heavily reliant upon feeds from his teammates. It also bears mentioning that he appears quite comfortable taking threes from both corners as he’s canned 22-of-69 from the right corner and 13-of-36 from the left. While some of this could be by design, it is proving to be a big part of his shot profile overall.

Quite honestly, the biggest difference-maker in regards to Okoro is his aggressiveness or rather the lack thereof on some nights. On nights when he appears to be looking for contact on drives to the rim, he often gets them and that has seemed to be the case more and more lately.

We all know that he is at his best when he is in transition and when he can force the defense into tough situations on the break, he can draw fouls with ease do to his physicality. This was on full display in a recent overtime victory over the visiting LA Clippers in which Okoro earned 13 freebies and converted 11 of them.

There are, of course, areas in which he needs further fine tuning be it his playmaking (1.8 assists per game) or finishing, he has shown he is capable of taking advantage of his added responsibilities.

While an All-Star type of leap in year three isn’t out of the question, if he continues to provide steady improvement in all of these areas the Cavaliers should feel great about their investment in him.