Fantasy Review For 2018/19 season:
The organization went through typical after-James meltdown. As for a team left with bunch of expensive and useless veterans and a little young potential, they fared pretty well. Unfortunately their plan of reshaping the offense around Kevin Love fell through, due to his another injury, and their new coach, Larry Drew didn’t stood up to challenge of leading a team through crisis. On the other side, they gathered a bit of future assets via trades and their first round pick, Collin Sexton turned out to be a decent NBA prospect.
Changes in the offseason
Lost = coach Larry Drew
Added = coach John Beilein, Darius Garland, Dylan Windler, Kevin Porter Jr.
Projected Depth Chart:
| PG | SG | SF | PF | C |
| Brandon Knight | Collin Sexton | Cedi Osman | Kevin Love | Tristan Thompson |
| Darius Garland | Jordan Clarkson | Dylan Windler | Jarrell Martin | Larry Nance |
| Matthew Dellavedova | Daniel Hamilton | Kevin Porter JR | Marquese Bolden | Ante Zizic |
Positional Battles: PG, C
There is a typical scenario for a rebuilding team here. Cavs will look to balance young players development with showcasing vets such as Knight, Clarkson, Love and Thompson. As the season goes, they will look to trade them, uloading positional logjams and freeing playing time for players like Garland, Porter Jr, Nance and Zizic. Especially situation at the center spot need an immediate solving as there are just to many decent players there for a team like Cavs.
Fantasy Relevant in standard leagues:
We wrote this last year: “He will be #1 option again just like in Minnesota so Love’s minutes and usage will skyrocket and his offensive numbers will grow with it. But there are couple issues with the comparison to 2013/14 season. Obvious one is age – Love is 30 years old so he’s physically worse than he was back then. Also Timberwolves had a better point guard than current Cavs and way better defense so Love will be on a worse team. Finally Cavs’ coach may not use him the same way Rick Adelman did so overall you probably shouldn’t expect anything close to Love’s value in 2013/14 even though some kind of improvement is a lock.” Nothing changed. Maybe this time he will be healthy enough to show it (probably not).
He is a per minute beast that just waits to be uncaged. Last season he just missed Top50 per game in just under 27 mpg. This year it might get even better – Till now he was positive contributor all over the stat sheet, with an exception of points and threes. According to Nance himself it shall change this year. He claims to make over 20 000 threes during offseason. Adding threes to his repertoire would add another dimension to his balanced stat line and, if given playing time, he might even crack top40 per game. The only question remains the same as last season. Would he get a chance to prove his worth?
His emergency after the All Star Weekend, was one of the most pleasant surprises of the fantasy basketball last season. Sexton, meant to be an unefficient scorer and nothing less, in the last two months of the season, managed to score almost 21 ppg, while shooting 48% from the field and 83 from the line. Also 2,4 threes after the break wasn’t exactly what we expected as he was heralded as a bad three point shooter, coming into the league. Still – he provides nothing else beside points, threes and decent percentages. This season he is expected to pay more point guard duties in the pass heavy Beileins offense, while playing alongside other high usage players such as Darius Garland and Kevin Love. He is worth taking a flier in the late rounds of fantasy drafts.
Could be useful with trades/injuries [or in deeper leagues than 15 teams]:
Darius Garland, Cedi Osman, Tristan Thompson, Ante Zizic
Just don’t bother with:
Jordan Clarkson, Brandon Knight, Matthew Dellavedova
Don’t forget to check the rest of the Cleveland Cavaliers fantasy basketball projections..
Posted in Teams preview
Posted in Teams preview