Season Preview: Darius Garland

I had one of those very pointless online arguments at the end of Garland’s rookie year with what can only be described as people who didn’t believe he would ever be a notable NBA player.  Maybe a starting level PG if we were lucky.  Now I wasn’t being prescient in my statements comparing him to Nash, Dame or Curry, but I did make those statements so I will rehash them here quickly.

It is almost impossible to tell what a 20 year old PG will end up being unless they are good enough to warrant the #1 overall pick.  Sure the occasional Kyrie Irving comes along and Derrick Rose was pretty dang good as a rookie but a lot of who we think of as GREAT NBA point guards weren’t even in the league at that age.  Steve Nash didn’t even manage to start until he was 24, didn’t average double digit points per game until he was 26 and ended up a 1st ballot HOFer.  Steph Curry?  2 months away from being 22 as a rookie and he had 3 years of college and a lifetime with an NBA player as a father to get him ready.  Dame?  22 as a rookie.  Kyle Lowry?  Doesn’t average double digit points until he is 24.  

Garland is young, he was born 6 days too early to be classified as a 19 year old rookie, coming off a knee injury and 139 mins of college play.  Weighting such a season heavily was fool-hardy, it wasn’t enough really to say anything except that he wouldn’t ever be an elite defender, but you would have made a killing betting on him being an All-Star ever, let alone before his rookie deal ran out.  But I digress.

As far as optimism goes I’m pretty sure everyone knows that Garland is really good already, but let’s recap the progress to date.  He has improved basically every half season in the league, while the 13/5 he averaged the last two months of his rookie year isn’t much to write home about, it is a ton better than the 11/3 he started out the year with.  Year two he goes for roughly 16/6 through the all-star break before jumping to 19/6 after, and now this past season it was 20/8 going into the break and 25/10 on 56% TS coming out of it.  

If that is it, if we toss in the 5 games pre-all star break (25.4 and 6) after his birthday and the 27.5 and 7 he averaged in the two play-in games and say ‘this guy won’t get any better than the first 28 games he played as a 22 year old (despite getting better every 6 months for the 3 years prior to that)

He is still an All-NBA caliber point guard.  

As a fan I am just going to soak that in and be a little jealous of my 9 year old who sleeps in his Darius Garland jersey most nights.  

Now lets go back to these other guys, the ones who are the best comps for Garland going forward, not elite athletes but high skill players at the PG position.  Where did they peak

Curry- age 27.  Using PER pretty much a straight line improvement into that season

Nash-  age 32.  Not quite the straight line due to injuries and team changes but he was still improving at 27/28/29.

Isaiah Thomas-  age 27.  Pretty much flat from 24 to 26 before having one monster season, but still better at 24 than at 23.

Dame Lillard- age 29, close to a straight line up from 22 to 29.  

There are some cautionary comps- Deron Williams who peaked at 23/24, and maintained that level until he was 28.  Chris Paul who peaked at 23 due to a knee injury, and returned merely to being the point god after that, and Kyrie Irving who is just a cautionary tale (still his non sticking it in Curry’s eye peak came after he was 24, not at 22/23).  

So the Cavs have that going for them, which is nice.

Garland’s game still has a lot of room to expand into.  Like Curry before him he hasn’t yet started taking really high volumes of 3pt attempts.  Steph started out at only 6.3 per 100 and didn’t break 10/100 until his age 24 season, and got up to 15.9 for his age 27 season (and has bettered even that each of his last 3 full seasons).  Garland won’t ever be the shooter that Steph is, but he is only at 9.3 attempts per 100 last season and he actually took fewer 3s per game (6.4 vs 6.8) despite having a higher usage (30 vs 27) and on more minutes (38.3 vs 34.6) in his 2nd half onslaught.  His higher production came through more attacking the hoop and generating shots for himself and teammates out of the necessity of the moment.  In a better structured offense he can find himself taking a lot more 3s which can increase his scoring output without harming his efficiency (his career average 3pt attempt is worth a .567 TS mark and his average over the past two years is worth .581).  

On the other side of this is the fact that his 12 assists per 100 last season already bests Steph’s career high, so while he won’t ever ascend to ‘most valuable scorer in the league’ status he can make some of that ground up with his passing feel which was shockingly good in the 2nd half last season after being a nice surprise in the first half.  While he is a little behind the same age Rubio and CP3 for assists/100 he is well ahead of Curry, Dame (better than his career best last season as well), and on par with John Wall.  

Darius is in good, no great 1st ballot HoF great if he stays healthy, company right now and he is a year and a half older than Evan Mobley and is on a 6 year deal with no player option thanks to his extension.  Yeah, its a good time to be a Cavs fan.