Cedi Osman’s play at Hawks for Cavs should warrant continued chances

In recent weeks, Cedi Osman has not received much meaningful playing time for the Cleveland Cavaliers. In four of the Cavaliers’ previous eight games heading into theirs at the Atlanta Hawks on Thursday, and in the last two before that, Osman had DNPs.

The reasoning for that seemingly was Osman had been off and that was dictating other areas of his game seemingly negatively, expressed Cleveland head coach J.B. Bickerstaff, per a report from Cleveland.com’s Chris Fedor. Dylan Windler, even coming off a stint with the Cleveland Charge, the Cavaliers G League affiliate, was taking opportunities from Osman of late, and despite Windler not hitting, Bickerstaff has appreciated how he’s impacted games in other ways, as Fedor noted.

That being said, Osman has given the Cavaliers a lift on plenty of occasions this season, and even with him being in a tough stretch, he still is capable of giving Cleveland a notable bench spark. I personally still have been baffled by the lack of opportunities for Osman in recent weeks, in which he’s had 16.7 minutes per game in his last nine appearances, and he’s had those aforementioned DNPs.

It was nice to see Osman get in the game early on at Atlanta, though, and to me, he was one of the few bright spots for the Cavs in an otherwise dispiriting performance in a blowout 131-107 road loss. Osman had 21 points on 7-of-10 shooting, went 3-of-6 from three, and had six free throw attempts, hitting 4.

As Bickerstaff essentially alluded to, Osman was aggressive, most notably (as Fedor’s report stated), and as Bickerstaff said, via Fedor, “his game wasn’t determined by his shots.”

Here was more on that front from Bickerstaff, again, via Fedor, regarding Osman.

"“I thought he was really good,” Bickerstaff said of Osman following the 131-107 loss. ‘I thought he was attack-minded and his game wasn’t determined by his shots. His game was determined by how aggressive he was, how hard he was working, how hard he was playing. When he plays like that, good things happen.'”"

Those comments are encouraging when it comes to the outlook for Osman.

Osman’s play on Thursday for the Cavs, even in a blowout L to the Hawks, should warrant more opportunities from here for him.

I get that the Cavaliers had anything but a stellar performance on Thursday against Trae Young, Kevin Huerter and the Hawks, who were still without John Collins, as Cleveland was searching for answers for defensively once again. That was similar to how things were versus the Dallas Mavericks and Luka Doncic on Wednesday, and the third quarter ultimately did the Cavaliers in on Thursday, too.

As we touched on, however, Osman was a bright spot for Cleveland, and it’s not as if his efforts were exclusively in garbage time. As Fedor’s report emphasized, Osman was a substitution early on for Caris LeVert, and it was evident from the jump that Cedi was playing with the right intentions, was not getting himself in difficult situations offensively that much, and he was playing with urgency.

From my perspective, while I get that at times Osman and Windler will play together, just in general, Osman should be getting opportunities again in bench minutes, particularly with how things are for the Cavs right now, and also with Dean Wade sidelined. It’s not as if Osman and Lamar Stevens can’t have minutes together, either, for what it’s worth.

Full disclosure, I’ll be the first to admit that Osman is a streaky play, and that goes without saying. In his last nine appearances Osman has hit just 24.3 percent from three, and had 5.9 points in 15.4 minutes per contest. His effective shooting clip in that span is down at 49.2 percent, and Osman’s plus-minus is minus-7.9 over that stretch.

Even taking that into account, with how depleted the Cavs are right now, involving key contributors, and to feasibly help out Kevin Love somewhat, Osman should be getting more opportunities in Cleveland’s last five regular season games. We’ll see in regards to realistically the play-in, in which the Cavs will have to be in I’d imagine, but if Osman plays with urgency, is decisive, and is not forcing it much, he can get hot, and it can ignite the Cavs.

We’ve seen that on a number of occasions this season, and while it didn’t lead to an encouraging performance for the team overall at Atlanta, Osman has shown he’s more than capable of giving the Cavs a notable lift in bench minutes.

It’s not clear if Osman will get more significant stretches of minutes in coming games, yet, of course. I just personally would believe that what Cedi provided on Thursday, and with what he’s done at other points this season, that more chances could be in-store for him. Pre-All-Star break, when he was much more regularly involved, he did shoot 35.6 percent from three on 5.7 attempts per outing, for instance.

Now, as Fedor touched on, Ricky Rubio is no longer in the cards for the Cavs bench, but Osman still a guy that has developed chemistry with Darius Garland, Love and others, and hopefully, more opportunities arise for Cedi. The soon-to-be 27-year-old rotational wing can get on a hot streak, and the Cavaliers could use that.