Cavs Player Grades: Darius Garland is a steady performer in 2022-23
By Dan Gilinsky
Evaluating Garland’s offensive play
Garland had a bit of a difficult start to this season, but that was mostly related to injury. His eye ailment to start out the season didn’t help his cause, and he endured sickness some in the earlygoing as well.
Along with the injury bug, it was going to be an adjustment for Garland, similarly to others in the same breadth, to get acclimated to playing alongside Donovan Mitchell.
For the most part, though, Garland followed up his past breakout with a very effective campaign. To some degree, he’s actually been better than in 2021-22, too.
Garland had nearly identical scoring splits in this regular season, and his three-point percentage increased to 41.0 percent on a negligable decrease of 0.7 in volume. It was also meaningful that Garland’s free throw clip per game improved to 4.7, which demonstrates he’s growing in terms of manipulating defenders on-ball.
Along with the scoring element, Garland has exhibited more fine-tuning as a passer and engine of the Cavaliers offense. There’s still some stretches where he can be a bit out of sorts, and at times in the beginning of the season, he had trouble in closing stretches.
But, to Garland’s credit, he’s still had 7.8 assists per game this season, and he’s seemingly steadied his play more later in games and/or in clutch scenarios, to a large degree, at least.
Additionally, Garland has trimmed down on turnovers this year, game-to-game. Sure, some of it has had to do with Mitchell’s arrival, as an aside.
Even still, Garland has cut his turnovers to under three per outing, and his chemistry with players such as Evan Mobley, Jarrett Allen, Isaac Okoro and Caris LeVert has improved. And Garland and Mitchell have played off one another better as the season has worn on.
Garland was not named an All-Star this go-round, but he’s rebounded greatly after a bit of a slow start because of the injuries, and he’s been sharp for the vast majority of the regular season.