#1: Cedi Osman
Cedi Osman had stretches where he looked like an NBA All-Star and helped save a few victories for his Cavs team because he was literally on fire on a number of nights shooting the rock. But then he’d go into a horrible stretch of basketball where he’d miss everything on his shot and would hinder the team’s final outcome. That was his fault for the poor shooting effort but also the fault of his coach J.B. Bickerstaff who would keep Osman in games too long and that’s simply poor coaching.
Last season for Osman was another season of ups and downs. While he averaged more than 20 minutes in 38 of the 66 games he played in, he had 31 games where he scored less than 10 points. That would suggest a player that wasn’t producing while getting quality minutes. Why the Cavaliers coaching staff didn’t track this better really had some Cavs fans scratching their heads.
While it’s nice to see Osman go on one of those offensive rolls where he’s knocking down three-point shots at will, it never was a consistent effort and that hurt the team. His best points game was against the Boston Celtics back in November where he went for 26 points while knocking down six three-pointers. But that was a game that the team lost.
In comparison, his veteran teammate Kevin Love scored more than 10 points a game in 53 contests this past season while playing in 48 games where he played more than 20 minutes. The point is, that it’s very obvious while looking at the numbers that Love’s contributions to his team went a long way to the squad’s success and while Osman has always been that nice story in theory, he just hasn’t played well consistently enough.