I honestly expected Sexton to have a huge 2nd year, but with Garland it becomes quite dicey.
To me, Sexton's 2nd year is of much greater importance than Garland's rookie season. For that reason, I believe we need to put the ball in Sexton's hands even if the end goal is to have it in Garland's hands more. I don't believe it is wise to take Sexton's freedom this season if we want to maximize his 2nd year growth. Although there are downsides to it if it's not in our future plan to have him as a lead guard.
I believe in Garland's talent, but no matter how you slice it, its going to be difficult and we need to be extra careful to not damage their growth and Sexton's in particular.
First of all, staggering their minutes is obviously the easiest way to maximize the growth of Garland and Sexton, respectively. I expect both will start with Garland exiting around the 7 minute mark and Sexton playing basically the entirety of the 1st quarter (could be the other way around but I kind of doubt it; Sexton needs time to find a rhythm, often). Then Garland starts the 2nd, with Sexton re-entering and Garland sitting around the 6 minute mark. Garland re-enters around the 3 minute mark and they finish the half together.
Rinse and repeat in the 2nd half. It will likely be that or some variation of it. Of course things could change if they work really well together but Garland is probably going to have a pretty light workload coming back from injury and adjusting to the speed of the NBA, etc.
I expect Sexton to begin the season playing a lot more minutes than Darius and working him in slowly. No need to rush it.
Secondly, offense shouldn’t be a problem for these guys working together, based on what I have seen and heard of Garland as a shooter — be it off-the-dribble, coming off or around off-ball screens or spotting up. He appears to be an elite shooter which will open things up for Collin. And, with the jump as a perimeter shooter he took last year, it isn’t like teams can just ignore Sexton when Garland is creating. Maybe one of our resident stat gurus can break down Sexton’s shooting numbers in spot-up or navigating off-ball screen situations last year. Seems like it was pretty damn good though.
The problem, as I am sure we are all aware, is how these two are able to defend when sharing the court. That is likely to be a problem. Whether it is the type of problem that requires us eventually (after at least first-year trial run) bringing one off the bench or picking one and trading the other ... we’ll find out down the road. But offense really should not be the problem with these two guys.
Third, I expect a lot of the pressure to be taken off of them with Beilein running a lot of sets through KLove, utilizing his complete offensive skillset which I still do not think we have ever fully seen realized here. He is the perfect bigman fit in Beilein’s schemes. You can run the offense through him really on all three levels (post, elbow, perimeter).
Getting a healthy Love back (*fingers crossed*) along with Sexton’s amazing leap as a shooter and the additions of Garland and Windler... suddenly, we can put some lineups out there to really space the floor.
Winning championships and going to The Finals is fun and all... but I truly love a good rebuild. The potential is fun, to me anyway.