Sam Vecenie of The Athletic has Sexon ranked #23 among his top 50 young players. Here's the write-up:
23. Collin Sexton | 6-2 guard, 22 years old | Cleveland Cavaliers | Contract: 2 years, $11.3 million, restricted free agent in 2022 | PR: 22
I was high on Sexton last year and remain high on him into the future. That’s why he stays pretty steady in regard to ranking despite averaging 22.8 points on a 57.5 true-shooting percentage. Simply put, he’s a phenomenal scorer who has worked incredibly hard to round out his overall package of moves. Sexton wasn’t a non-shooter in high school and college, but he was certainly more of a volume shooter that went through bouts of inconsistency. That’s not really the case anymore. We’re at the point where Sexton is just a really good shooter from almost any situation. Off the catch next to Darius Garland, he’s lethal. Off the bounce, if you give him even a sliver of space, he’s going to hurt you and pull up. He’s still a bit more in love with the midrange jumper than you’d like to see, but he makes about 49 percent of those little free throw line pull-ups that he takes a ton of coming off ball screens. There are worse options than that when the shot clock is running down.
Beyond that, Sexton is no longer a substandard finisher. He’s fine for a lead guard. Not above average, but just about average at 53 percent at the rim. Over the last three years, the transformation in his body has been obvious to anyone who has watched the Cavs regularly. He’s gone from being a skinny teenager to a strong guy in his early 20s, which allows him to absorb contact at the basket. For a player like Sexton, who plays with such aggression and seeks contact on his drives, that’s incredibly important. He’ll go up into a rim protector who uses the principle of verticality well and can take the hit, balance himself in mid-air and finish. In this same vein, it’s not an accident that Sexton’s free throw rate continues to rise. He’s lightning quick and can get into the paint with ease but now his added ability to attack the basket with confidence allows him to contact hunt in order to create easy scoring chances. I’d expect at some point he’ll average around seven free throws per game.
The big questions are still pretty simple, though. Is Sexton good enough at playing with others? The Cavs, with Sexton leading the way, still only have the 29th-best offense in the NBA. Now, I don’t know how much I would put on Sexton for this. Andre Drummond’s insistence on getting perimeter possessions to pad his numbers was certainly a bigger detriment. The team’s lack of shooting around Sexton is another. But he does often consistently miss open passing lanes to teammates in a way that is detrimental to ball movement. It would really help the Cavs if he turned some of those midrange pull-ups into cross-corner kick-outs or dump-offs. Additionally, while Sexton’s willingness to fight through screens in recovery has improved, he still gets lost an awful lot away from the ball and gets a tad overaggressive at times. He’s an improved defender but not an average player on that end of the floor yet. And there still remain significant questions as to whether or not Sexton and Garland can combine to be anything resembling a workable defense in the playoffs.
Still, Sexton remains a historically relevant scorer for his age. The Cavs’ guard has a genuinely special skill, and it’s the most important skill you can have in basketball. Now, he just needs to add to the rest of his game to make that scoring translate to winning basketball games at a higher level. I think he’ll probably get there on defense by his mid-20s. But the passing and playmaking for others remain the swing skill that could push him into the stratosphere.
