Darius Garland cocked his head to the side, took a second, considered.
A statement had been presented to him and discussed with several of his teammates earlier in the day, at morning shootaround ahead of the Cleveland Cavaliers’ season opener one year ago — a binary proposition capping a conversation about the growth of Garland’s game:
True or false: DG’s the most underrated player in the NBA.
It’s a statement born of understandable but frustrating circumstances. Line up next to a perennial All-NBA candidate with a megawatt game like Donovan Mitchell, and people might not necessarily remember that Garland has an All-Star selection, too (and arguably got snubbed for a second the following season). Or realize that only 60 players ever have turned in both a 50-point and a 15-assist game … and that Garland’s one of them.
Those finer-point details that Garland displays from October through April? The blink-and-you’ll-miss-it release on the jumper, the Nash-esque penchant for keeping his dribble alive under the basket to preserve passing possibilities, the pristine footwork and shot-making touch, the ludicrously capacious bag, the change of pace he learned from his NBA father, that evil hesi — all that stuff? Well, they don’t tend to stick in the collective consciousness if your team doesn’t make a deep run in the playoffs.
It all adds up to a perhaps artificially depreciated value. So: The statement?
“Yeah, I feel underrated,” Garland told Yahoo Sports. “I don’t really get the credit that I deserve … but we’ll keep making strides in the right direction, keep growing, and that’s how you move on.”
Garland offered that assessment shortly after a season-opening win over the Brooklyn Nets — one in which he strained his left hamstring, costing him the next four games, and setting a grim tone for his 2023-24 campaign.
The Cavs, broadly, did keep making strides last season, finishing fourth in the East despite a slew of rotation players missing significant time, and winning their first playoff series in six years. Garland, however, saw his ascent stall, with the hamstring issues curtailing his early-season production before a mid-December collision with Kristaps Porziņģis completely wrecked him.
The fractured jaw that Garland suffered kept him on the shelf for six weeks, unable to work out lest an elevated heart rate compromise his recovery. With his jaw wired shut, Garland couldn’t eat solid food for more than a month; the all-liquid diet cost him 12 pounds, and the jaw fracture might have cost him specific strength in his grip. That left the 6-foot-1 point guard significantly weakened when he did return from an absence that he’s described as not only “the worst injury of my career,” but “one of the hardest things I’ve ever been through in my life” — a setback that, combined with the loss of his grandmother during the season, contributed to him feeling like he’d “sort of lost my joy for basketball.”
“I mean, last year, we know he went through something crazy that none of us have experienced, and you can see that his game took a dip,” Cavs center Jarrett Allen recently told reporters. “It’s hard for anybody to go through that.”
But with the cloud cover of that brutal season now cleared, all that’s left is a gleaming silver lining. With the Cavs off to one of the hottest starts in NBA history — a perfect 15-0 heading into Tuesday’s Emirates NBA Cup meeting with the Celtics at TD Garden, the building where his 2023-24 derailed in December and ended in May — Garland is fully healthy, playing the best basketball of his career … and right back to reminding observers and opponents alike that they overlook him at their own risk:
Garland enters Tuesday’s tilt with the C’s averaging 21.4 points and 7.0 assists in 30.2 minutes per game. After cracking 20 points just 19 times in 57 games last season, he’s already done it nine times in 15 games this season, leading Cleveland in scoring in six of those contests — including a 25-point, 12-assist performance in a Sunday win over the Hornets, in which Mitchell got the night off to rest, allowing his backcourt partner to stride confidently into the center-stage spotlight and cook:
He’s back to being one of the NBA’s premiere downhill attackers, averaging 15 drives to the basket per game, and making even more out of those forays into the paint. Garland’s converting a career-high 66% of his shots within 4 feet of the basket, which he’s taking more frequently than he has since his sophomore season. He’s also leading the league in assists per game off of drives, thanks in part to his gift for playing the cat-and-mouse game with dropping big men, consistently keeping them guessing as to whether he’s about to loft the floater that he’s cashing 71% of the time or tossing an identical-looking lob to the likes of Mobley and Allen.
Sink back to play Garland for the drive, though, and you’re in danger, because he’s shooting the absolute leather off the ball: 55% from midrange, 45.5% from 3-point land, 93.2% from the free-throw line, all career highs. On one hand, that can’t possibly be sustainable. (That goes for the Cavs as a whole, who are shooting 41.9% from 3-point range as a team, which not only leads the league, but would be the second-highest mark in NBA history — and the highest when not shooting from a shorter 3-point line.)
It might not be that far beyond the boundaries of possibility, though, considering a healthy Garland is one of the best shooters in the world … even if his name doesn’t necessarily leap to the front of your mind when you conjure that list.
To wit:
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Only 31 players have made more 3-pointers than Garland since the start of the 2021-22 season (and that’s with him missing 25 games last season);
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Only eight of them have shot a higher percentage from deep than Garland’s 39.4%;
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He’s one of just 11 players to launch more than 275 attempts from at least 28 feet out in that span;
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He’s the only one in that group to knock down at least 40% of those extra long balls.
That Garland is that good a shooter has actually been something of a sticking point in Cleveland over the years, with coaches and teammates alike consistently calling on the young table-setter to make sure to feed himself, too.
“Yeah, I hear that a lot,” a laughing Garland told Yahoo Sports last year. “But I’ve been playing like that all my life. I’ve always been taught to play the right way, so I try to get my teammates involved, and when it’s my time to try to be aggressive and shoot the ball, I’ll just do that.”
Add new Cavs head coach Kenny Atkinson to the ranks of those demanding Garland let it fly.
“He wants me to shoot as many 3s as I can,” Garland told reporters in training camp. “He wants me to get up to eight to 10 3s a game. He wants me to shoot all the open ones, shoot ’em with confidence. He told me, be free, play my game, play with the joy I always had.”
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The attempt totals have been depressed a bit by the fact that Cleveland has blown so many opponents’ doors off that Garland’s only averaging a career-low 30.1 minutes per game. So far, so good, though: He’s firing a career-high 10.6 triples per 100 possessions, and knocking down a torrid 45.5% of them — a combination of shooting volume, accuracy and offensive usage that only Stephen Curry has managed over the course of a full season. (He’s done it twice. Of course he has.)
Some of the uptick in Garland’s long-range bombing stems from the ways in which Atkinson has sought to overhaul Cleveland’s offense. A Cavs team that finished last season 24th in possessions per 48 minutes is up to seventh thus far, getting shots up a half-second faster than last season on average; Garland has already made 10 3-pointers in transition in 15 games, compared to just 16 in 57 games last season.
It’s also to some degree a function of the decision to shift more on-ball responsibility to Evan Mobley. Garland’s average time of possession is his lowest since his rookie season, and he’s spending just 31% of his floor time on the ball, according to NBA RAPM, a drop of nearly 10% from last season; Mobley, in turn, has already finished more possessions as the ball-handler in the pick-and-roll in 14 games this season (24) than he did in 50 games last season (22).
That shift, aimed primarily at better leveraging the young big man’s overflowing suite of skills, also has the fringe benefit of weaponizing the Cavs’ All-Star guards as lethal threats off the ball. Garland’s taking a career-high 3.3 catch-and-shoot 3-pointers per game this season, and drilling a scorching 49% of them — a top-15 mark among 159 players to launch at least 30 long balls off the catch.
That combination of on- and off-ball production puts Garland in rare air among backcourt threats. He’s one of just four players in the NBA this season to rank in the 80th percentile or better in producing points as both a pick-and-roll ball-handler and a spot-up shooter, according to Synergy Sports Technology. The other three: Anthony Edwards, Kyrie Irving … and, perfectly, Garland’s teammate Ty Jerome, who was limited to just two games last season by ankle surgery, and who has bounced back to play obscenely good ball this season, shooting 63% on 2-pointers and 54% on 3s with a 3.5-to-1 assist-to-turnover ratio.
Garland has paired his offensive bounce-back with a big step on the defensive end, too. At 6-foot-1 with a 6-foot-5 wingspan and a slender build, Garland’s always going to profile as the weakest link in the Cavaliers’ starting five. But after getting healthy and putting some muscle back on, he’s applying more ball pressure at the point of attack, and generating steals, blocks and deflections at career-high rates. His ability to navigate ball screens and muck up passing lanes away from the play grade out as the best of his six pro seasons, according to The BBall Index’s charting.
[15 things to know about Cleveland’s 15-0 start]
“His defensive effort is the biggest thing,” Mitchell told reporters after a win over the Knicks. “Like, 34 points? Yeah, he does that. Not really tripping on that. But being able to slide your feet, get to the spots, be there — those are the things we all feed off of. He’s been phenomenal.”
That phenomenal play has carried over into crunch time. The Cavs are a perfect 7-0 in games in which the score is within five points in the final five minutes, outscoring opponents by 46 points in 25 close-and-late minutes. They’ve scored just under 1.5 points per crunch-time possession, thanks in large part to Garland, who sits seventh in the NBA in clutch scoring with 32 points on sizzling 12-for-15 shooting, with five assists against just one turnover.
“It doesn’t surprise me because of the talent and the smarts and what a great passer he is and good decision-maker,” Atkinson recently told reporters. “He’s got the shot. He’s got everything. He’s a complete, complete point guard.”
And because Garland’s once again playing his full-fledged floor game, giving them two of those “complete, complete point guards,” the Cavs are back to brutalizing opponents in just about every configuration. Cleveland’s starting five has outscored opponents by 10.6 points per 100 possessions, fifth-best among lineups to have logged at least 75 minutes together. In 209 minutes with Mitchell running the show without Garland? Plus-15.4 points-per-100. In 225 Darius-sans-Donovan minutes? Plus-16.3 points-per-100.
Put it all together, and according to a slew of advanced metrics — value over replacement player, box plus-minus, win shares per 48 minutes, player efficiency rating, Neil Paine’s estimated RAPTOR, The BBall Index’s LEBRON, etc. — the 24-year-old guard has been one of the 15 to 25 most productive players in the NBA this season.
“He is a true point guard,” Atkinson said after a win over the Bucks. “And now, add the scoring to it, and you’ve got an All-Star guy.”
Before the injuries scuttled his 2023-24 run, Garland told Yahoo Sports that he had his sights set on a second All-Star appearance and a first All-NBA nod; maybe he was just a year early. Because if he and the Cavs keep this up, he won’t be overlooked or underrated anymore.
“He’s gonna keep playing like this,” Mitchell recently told reporters. “This is who he is.”
