Nylon Calculus Rookie Review: What did the Cavaliers see from Darius Garland?

Even if the NBA regular season is canceled, we’ve seen enough to start assessing the first seasons of notable rookies. What did the Cavaliers see from Darius Garland this season?

As a draft prospect, Darius Garland was something of a mystery box. He played in just four full games for Vanderbilt, none against conference opponents, before a torn meniscus ended his freshman season. The numbers were impressive but, again, they were in just a handful of games and they came against Winthrop, USC, Alcorn State and Liberty.

The Cleveland Cavaliers ended up taking Garland with the fifth pick, trusting the shooting and playmaking potential that was implied in his high school profile and small college sample, apparently envisioning him as a long-term backcourt complement to Collin Sexton, their lottery pick from the previous season.

Garland did impress at times, scoring in double figures in 30 of his final 34 games of the season and averaging 12.3 points and 3.9 assists per game. But, digging deeper into the stats, did he produce in the ways the Cavs may have been expecting him too? And did he show anything new?

What did we expect?

In a late November video breakdown of both Garland and Coby White, Trevor Magnotti focused on Garland’s shooting as a key strength and one of the skills that potentially set him apart in this rookie class.

"It’s a shame we won’t get to continue to watch Garland’s shooting develop alongside White’s this season — but for now, Garland has the slight edge as a pull-up shooter, and coupled with his other strengths as a passer and spot-up shooter, pushes him ahead of White as the better prospect."

At that point, Garland’s college career was already finished but he had put down enough tape, and canned 11-of-23 attempts from beyond the arc, to solidify his reputation as a strong shooter. The Cavs were certainly hoping to see more of that during his rookie season but Garland’s ceiling as a primary initiator is also tied to his ability to supplement his outside accuracy with creating for others and creating opportunities for himself off the dribble inside the arc. Those skills weren’t as clearly defined in his short NCAA career and so this rookie season was an important data point in determining how well-rounded an offensive player he’d be.

What did we get?

The most important piece of Garland’s profile — outside shooting — was a solid strength this season. Shooting 35.5 percent from beyond the arc is not an eye-popping number but his splits between catch-and-shoot and pull-up attempts inspire a lot more optimism. The chart below shows all rookies with at least 50 pull-up and catch-and-shoot 3-point attempts since the 2013-14 season, the first year player tracking data is available at the NBA’s stats site.

Check out the interactive visualization here.

Garland shot a robust, 39.2 percent on catch-and-shoot attempts, ranking in the 65th percentile among the 45 players in this sample. His overall percentage was dragged down because he attempted 142 pull-up 3-pointers last season, the 11th-highest total of all rookies in the sample. He made just 31.7 percent but even that ranked in the 61st percentile. Just seven players in the 45-person sample ranked in the 60th percentile or better in both pull-ups and catch-and-shoot attempts and Garland was among a smaller group of just five — along with Tyler Herro, Bogdan Bogdanovic, Buddy Hield and Sexton — who did so on at least 100 attempts of each shot variety.

In short, he still looks like a strong outside shooter and there’s every reason to think his overall 3-point percentage will increase next year as he gets more accurate and more selective on pull-up attempts.

The other pieces of his playmaking profile were a bit more worrisome.

Garland joined Ja Morant as the only rookies to average double-digit drives per game this season and he shot 44.5 percent on those drives, about the same as Pascal Siakam and well ahead of other rookie playmakers like Coby White, Jarrett Culver and R.J. Barrett. However, that’s still a relatively low mark and he’ll need to improve significantly, especially considering how rarely he drew fouls — on just 2.8 percent of his drives.

The bigger concern was playmaking off those drives. Garland registered almost as many turnovers (69) as assists (73) off drives this year and he was the only player in the league average double-digit drives per game with a double-digit turnover percentage on those drives. A lot of his turnovers were sloppy passes, trying to force things through traffic or into angles that just aren’t there.

Many of these look embarrassingly sloppy but, of course, in reality they were broken up by plenty of cleaner assists and more prescient reads. And, remember, we’re looking at a player who essentially went from high school to the NBA with just a five-game, non-conference stop at Vanderbilt in between.

It’s clear that Garland has plenty of offensive tools. He can shoot, with accuracy, over the top of the defense. He can get into the lane and finish. He can move the defense and find open teammates. The struggle this year was figuring out when and where to deploy each of these tools. More repetition, more NBA game experience should slow the game down for him, help him see when it’s worth forcing the pass, or trying the floater, or backing things off and looking for a screen to shoot over.

The Cavaliers knew (or should have known) they were picking a player with a slightly longer developmental trajectory and his shooting and scoring, especially in the second half of the season, should be heartening. The pairing of Garland and Sexton still looks a bit shaky, particularly if Garland can’t develop as a decision-maker and floor-general, offsetting some of Sexton’s limitations in that area. But even if they aren’t an ideal combination, Garland still looks like a player with a very positive offensive ceiling.