What we learned this week: Darius Garland is one of the best point guards in the NBA
Garland’s consistent scoring showed through in an inconsistent week for the Cavaliers.
The Cleveland Cavaliers had two nice bounce-back wins that bookended a terrible loss to the Oklahoma City Thunder on Thursday. Here’s what we learned from the up and down week.
Another wing would give the Cavs more margin for error
The Thunder were forced to downshift on Thursday with Isaiah Hartenstein out of the lineup. The Cavs couldn’t keep up as their quicker, interchangeable wings caused Cleveland to speed up their offensive process which resulted in a one-sided loss. It wasn’t difficult to see how a Cam Johnson-type player would help them in matchups like this.
The lack of versatile wings has shown through in some of their losses like this one and their November defeat to the Boston Celtics. That said, they’ve also shown they can beat teams with their size.
The Cavs were able to defeat the Thunder the first time around because of how their big men handled Oklahoma City’s smaller wings. Conversely, they lost because Evan Mobley and Jarrett Allen weren’t able to beat up mismatches the same way.
A trade for a wing would help this team and potentially make them title favorites. Adding more margin for error or depth in case of an injury is important. However, the Cavs will likely only defeat teams like the Thunder and Celtics if their bigs can win their individual matchups. That has been the case throughout the season and was reinforced Thursday.
Donovan Mitchell is still a top-tier scorer
Mitchell’s bad games stand out more than his good ones. That’s the case for any All-NBA level scoring guard. This makes back-to-back poor performances against Lu Dort and the Thunder as noticeable as they were. Mitchell was only able to manage 19 combined points on 6-31 shooting in both games.
No defender in the league can replicate Dort’s size, strength, and quickness. It seems like he was built in a lab to give someone like Mitchell problems and he did. His struggles against Dort speak more to Dort’s excellence as a defender than it does any shortcomings Mitchell has.
The other two games this week show how talented Mitchell still is. He scored 35 and 36 points in Cleveland’s two wins. The Cavs needed his aggressive scoring output in both games and he provided as he was able to effectively use his explosiveness to get to and finish at the rim.
Only the top-tier superstar-level players are immune from bad matchups. As good as Mitchell is, he may not be able to overcome Oklahoma City’s defense. They’re specifically engineered to stop what he does best while proving to be one of the best defenses we’ve seen in the last several years. That doesn’t mean that Mitchell is any less of a player because of it. He’s still an elite scorer even if Dort and the Thunder are his kryptonite.
Darius Garland continues to level up
The game is slowing down for Garland in a way that has allowed him to be one of the most efficient scorers in the entire league. He’s just on the edge of being in the 50-40-90 club which is difficult to even flirt with when you shoot as many threes as Garland does.
Kenny Atkinson said before the season that he wanted Garland to get more easy catch-and-shoot threes to help his efficiency. Garland is attempting more and knocking them down at an outrageous 47.9% clip. This is in combination with having a more effective floater as he’s finishing 62% of his shots in the short mid-range—thanks in part to the more principled spacing. This has added up to being in the 95th percentile in points per shot attempt for point guards (1.28).
That efficiency was on display this week. He methodically carved up the Pacers for 24 points on 50% shooting despite having an off-night from three as he went 7-10 from inside the arc. Garland followed it up with being the only Cavalier to play well against the Thunder as he registered 20 points and 9 assists in just 24 minutes. Finally, he put away the Minnesota Timberwolves on Saturday with a 29-point performance fueled by his off-the-dribble three-point shooting as he went 5-10 from deep.
Garland has spent this season discovering how good of an offensive player he can be and he may still just be scratching the surface. The ease with which he’s able to efficiently score makes you almost wish he tried to push himself to be inefficient. What would it look like if he tried to force things just a little bit more? Could he be a 27-point-per-game scorer on 39% three-point shooting if he was attempting nine plus threes a game instead of the 6.9 he currently is?
Garland’s steady season makes you reevaluate just how good of a scorer he can be. He’s been one of the best point guards in the league and it seems like there’s still more untapped potential in his game.
Whether or not Garland is an All-Star shouldn’t even be up for discussion at this point. He’s graduated beyond that conversation.