Are the Cavaliers veterans right about Collin Sexton?

In the eyes of many, taking Sexton at No. 8 overall in the 2018 Draft was a bit of a reach for the Cavaliers, especially if they were desperate for a point guard, since Shai Gilgeous-Alexander was still available. There’s a lot of additional pressure on Sexton considering that, along with Ante Zizic, he is the only piece remaining that the Cavaliers acquired in the Kyrie Irving trade last summer. NBA GMs are not immune from worrying about sunken costs, after all.

Unfortunately, Collin Sexton has not looked great in his first few weeks as a professional basketball player, and just nine games into the Cavaliers season, his veteran teammates have taken notice and are dissatisfied. According to a recent report from The Athletic’s Joe Vardon, when Cavaliers veterans “talk about younger players not knowing their role, or knowing how to win, or what to do on the court, they mean Sexton. Throughout the organization, the line on Sexton is that he does not ‘know how to play.’”

The Cavaliers are not a good team, but they’re even worse when Sexton is on the floor. In his 213 minutes, the Cavaliers are being outscored by 14.3 points per 100 possessions, which is six points worse than he is off the floor. With Sexton leading the offense, the Cavaliers are only able to muster 99.8 points per 100 possessions, which would be the worst offense in the league. Also, the Cavaliers’ assist ratio drops from 16.2 to 13.7 with Sexton on the floor, which is quite damning considering Sexton is the team’s point guard, speaking to his lack of skill and surety leading the offense.

So how is Sexton making the team worse and what is it about his play so far that has his teammates convinced that he does not know how to play? The biggest issue is that, despite being a top ten pick, Sexton nevertheless seems to lack definable basketball skills, having been prized more for his tenacity and fearlessness than his ability to make or create shots. For those who were high on Sexton, more enticing than his shooting or passing was his attitude and his dynamic explosiveness, which so far has not translated into tangible on-court success. Sexton is not alone in this though. Many of the league’s top point guards, such as John Wall and Russell Westbrook, were drafted for their athleticism as much as for than their nascent abilities, but both were able to hone their other abilities in order to become All-Stars. Of course, in the cases of Wall and Westbrook, they both seemed to have a preternatural court vision that gave them a baseline from which to build.

In light of Sexton’s lack of passing ability, at present, he is cast as a score-first point guard, which is fine, apart from the fact that he’s not particularly adept at scoring either. Apart from the right block, where he is shooting 70 percent on ten attempts so far, he has not been able to consistently make shots from anywhere on the floor. He does show a promising ability to get to the rim — having taken nearly a third of his shots in the restricted area — but is not yet able to make a league average percentage from that area, hitting just 52 percent of his shots there. Nevertheless, that aggressiveness in attacking the rim is paying dividends in his ability to get to the free throw line where Sexton is shooting over 90 percent. If he could learn how to finish at the rim, get better at creating for others, and become more judicious, and effective, when shooting his mid-range jumper, then Sexton could be well on his way to justifying his high selection.

The Cavaliers hoped they would be fighting for a playoff spot when the season began, but already, just three weeks into the year, it’s become quite clear that those hopes were overly optimistic. They have the worst record in the NBA at 1-8, have fired their coach, and will be without their best player for the foreseeable future. On top of that, there appears to be an absolute ton of off-court issues, with Larry Drew reluctant to take on interim coaching duties without a long-term commitment from ownership, J.R. Smith publicly stating he’d like to be traded, and the team reneging on an agreement with Kyle Korver that they would trade him if LeBron left.

It’s not particularly surprising that any of these things have happened, but when you add it all up, it’s a lot. And the season’s still just three weeks old! Clearly, the Cavaliers have literally nothing to lose from playing Sexton an absolute ton this season and seeing if he blossoms at all in a bigger role. Plus, considering how much worse the team has been with him on the floor, that means more losses which increases the team’s chances of earning a high draft pick while giving them better odds of keeping their first-round pick, which is owed to the Hawks if it falls outside of the top ten.

If they have not done so already, Cleveland needs to begin to focus on building for the future and right now, Collin Sexton projects to be a major part of it. His veteran teammates may be uncharitable in denigrating his level of play so far this season, but they’re not entirely wrong either. It’s obviously unfair to make blanket assumptions about a player’s NBA future less than ten games into their career, but it is undeniably clear that if Sexton is going to reward the Cavaliers’ faith in him in both the short and long-term, a ton of improvement needs to happen. It’s not merely that skills need to be refined; they need to be added to. At least on a team going nowhere, Sexton should have ample playing time to work on developing his game. The question moving forward is not only whether or not he’s capable of doing so — it’s whether he will have the support and mentoring necessary from both his teammates and his coaches. Like most things in the Cavaliers organization right now, it’s all very messy.