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Darius Kinnard Garland

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What is Darius Garland's Ceiling?

  • One Time All-Star

    Votes: 14 8.9%
  • Occasional All-Star

    Votes: 16 10.2%
  • 5-6 Time All-Star

    Votes: 31 19.7%
  • Perennial All-Star

    Votes: 40 25.5%
  • An All-NBA Team or Two

    Votes: 23 14.6%
  • Perennial All-NBA Teamer

    Votes: 20 12.7%
  • Occasional MVP Candidate

    Votes: 11 7.0%
  • Perennial MVP Candidate

    Votes: 2 1.3%
  • MVP, Baby!

    Votes: 10 6.4%
  • Being Jim Chones

    Votes: 12 7.6%

  • Total voters
    157
He needs to make his open 3's. Being a respectable shooter will do wonders for his in between game.
 
Needs to take them as much as make them. He's passing up 3 wide open 3s a game
Agree. He has to take more threes. I hate him faking the 3 then driving just to shoot his underhand layup or the floater. He cant make those shots right now. Just bomb away at the 3 point line. Let sexton and kpj do the slashing.
 
So strange to see Darius lose confidence in that sweet looking jumpshot, but here we are. I assumed his early season struggles would've worked themselves out by now. I don't want to overstate it. He is still shooting over 35% from three for the season which isn't great given his skillset and reputation, but also isn't exactly trash for a young rookie basically straight out of high school.

I both want him to keep jacking those shots up while also understanding his apprehension. The veterans on this team for much of the season (I'm hoping things have changed) haven't exactly made things easy on the young guys and their growing pains. Every missed three it feels like guys are looking around, waiting for one of the vets to roll their eyes or passive aggressively jog to their defensive assignment.

The guy just turned 20 and he has players who've won championships giving him side-eye when he misses a few threes in a row. It is easy for us to say "keep taking them." Harder to continue jacking them up under the circumstances that had existed on the court earlier (body language by the vets has been much better lately).


The first 25 games, Darius was averaging 4.6 three point attempts per game while playing 28 minutes (36.5% made). In the 28 games since, he has actually upped his attempts to 5.6 per game but he is playing more minutes per game (33) and making them at a lower clip (34.2%). That 5.6 attempts per game should probably be more like 7 or 8 but, like I said, I get why he isn't just throwing them up there with wild abandon like Trae Young.

On the bright side, he is averaging almost 5 assists in the last 28 games compared to 2.8 in the first 25. His turnover rate, meanwhile, has stayed about the same (2.5 per game).

There is reason for optimism with all of our young guys right now. We may just have to re-calibrate our timelines for each guy. Coming into the season, I thought KPJ was going to be the raw prospect with the high ceiling who would take a long time to even get significant minutes, while Garland would spend the first half of the season adjusting to the speed of the game and then start to explode offensively.

It has been exactly the opposite. It was pretty obvious right from the start KPJ was the more prepared rookie to step right in. The sky is the limit for that kid. Garland will take more grooming and our player development staff is going to have to put in some work to make him a useful player on a good team. I guess that's the advantage of buying extra first round picks.

Remember, Chicago took Norris Cole before Jimmy Butler in the 2011 Draft. Now, I think Garland is a far better prospect than Cole ever was, but the point stands.
 
It’s funny that we rail against the Cavs never developing young players in the the LeBron era(fairly true but then how many picks did we actually make)

Player development happens over several seasons. And it doesn’t always start with “he’s playing great now he just needs to develop to being greater”

Darius does not deserve the assumption that he will be great simply due to his draft status or a gut feeling. But he also doesn’t deserve impatience and the expectation that he will not improve over the course of a few seasons. Especially given he didn’t even make it to conference play in his one year in college.

Really interested in seeing how he turns out. I could honestly see a wide range of outcomes for him. Some disappointing, and some rather high and exciting(provided he’s still here)

Hopefully the roster composition will be such next year that we do not need to start him and Sexton together. If guys like Brandon Clarke and KPJ can develop off the bench, so too can Darius.
 
Darius needs to just sleep all day every day during this all star break. He looks completely gassed and exhausted
 
Garland needs to take 10 thousand 3s a day.
What is so alarming to me is that, as bad as Garland's defense is, his offense is even worse. He takes bad shots and does not really do anything off-ball. He needs to shoot 3s whenever he gets open and not try his stupid floater.
 
What is so alarming to me is that, as bad as Garland's defense is, his offense is even worse. He takes bad shots and does not really do anything off-ball. He needs to shoot 3s whenever he gets open and not try his stupid floater.

I always question if taking more 3s will open his game as a PG and slow the game down for him. I feel like if they lean too hard into asking him to take 3s that he will just end up as some version of Boobie Gibson.

If he doesn't figure out his inside game, can he be an effective PG? Does it take a unique player at another position to make him playable because he essential would be a 3 pt specialist that can help handle the ball?
 
I always question if taking more 3s will open his game as a PG and slow the game down for him. I feel like if they lean too hard into asking him to take 3s that he will just end up as some version of Boobie Gibson.

If he doesn't figure out his inside game, can he be an effective PG? Does it take a unique player at another position to make him playable because he essential would be a 3 pt specialist that can help handle the ball?
I actually think that Garland will be significantly better next season. His body is not in good enough physical shape to take the NBA’s daily beating. With that said, a big reason why his offensive metrics are so poor is his shot selection. Most importantly, it’s something that he can fix in season.
 
I think his defense is his most underrated part. If this is his floor, he has a very hittable average ceiling unlike another player we know.
 

Props to DG in the fourth. He hit that three to put the Cavs over the Wiz and the Cavs never looked back.

He definitely needs to play like he did in the fourth. Fuck Love and Drummond. Take control. Shoot that bitch. He was also +18 last night.
 

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