Cleveland Cavaliers guard Darius Garland can still save his season

Donovan Mitchell’s 33 points wasn’t enough to put the game away for the Cleveland Cavaliers last Friday against the Indiana Pacers. He needed help from Darius Garland to do that.

Mitchell’s step-back three in the final minute of a two-point game came up short. Max Strus grabbed the offensive rebound and the ball found its way to Garland.

Mitchell didn’t come get the ball — he let Garland take it from there. Garland, who had 13 points on 10 shot attempts with four turnovers up until that point, rewarded his trust by canning what was the game-sealing three.

Afterward, Mitchell reaffirmed his belief in Garland.

“I’ve continued to trust him since I got here,” Mitchell said. “When you put yourself in those situations, like a night like tonight, I’ve been there a lot of times, that’s big. That goes a long way. He executed and delivered for us tonight.”

Cleveland is hoping this sequence will be symbolic of how the playoffs will play out. Even though Garland has had a disappointing season, his performance in the playoffs is all that matters. For him to do that, he will need to excel in the areas he didn’t in the regular season.

This has been Garland’s worst season since his rookie year. His various injuries — including losing 12 pounds after fracturing his jaw — are a significant reason why that’s the case. No matter the cause, Garland has registered his lowest points per shot attempt, assist percentage, assist-to-usage ratio, and turnover rate since his rookie season.

The first-round series with the Orlando Magic will be won by the team that executes better half-court offense. That will come down to the team that can consistently win one-on-one matchups.

“You can run as much pretty s--- as you want, but eventually everybody just starts switching it and you got to have guys that can win their matchups,” head coach J.B. Bickerstaff said about the playoffs.

Garland has shown he can do that, especially against this Magic team.

Orlando will likely put Jalen Suggs, one of the best perimeter defenders in the game, on Mitchell as much as possible. This will leave Garland with Gary Harris and Cole Anthony, who are two defenders he’s had success against this season.

Harris and Anthony’s inability to contain Garland is why he averaged 26.7 points on .509/.389/.864 shooting splits in his three games against them in the regular season.

None of this matters if Garland doesn’t take care of the ball. The Magic finished second in the league in forcing turnovers. Meanwhile, Garland is turning it over on 14.8% of the possessions he uses which is in the 19th percentile for point guards. This simply isn’t a series Garland can be effective in if he isn’t doing a good job of valuing each possession.

Cleveland’s offense ran into problems last postseason due to the lack of players who can pass, dribble and shoot. This meant that trapping Garland and Mitchell forced the ball to go to players who can’t do all three which stalled out the offense. The Max Strus addition helps, but this is still a concern considering Bickerstaff starts what most would consider to be two traditional centers.

This is where Garland struggled against the New York Knicks in last year’s playoffs. Their physicality and doubling at the level of the screen made it difficult for him to affect the game in any way. If you factor out his strong performance in the Game 2 victory, Garland averaged 17.8 points on .429/.286/.786 shooting splits with just 4.5 assists and 3.5 turnovers. That isn’t going to get it done when Mitchell also struggled.

Mitchell needs to prove that he’s the superstar he views himself as this series. But he will have a hard time doing so while he’s drawing Suggs (and maybe Jonathan Isaac), the focus of the defense, and still doesn’t look 100% after his knee injury. This only heightens the need for Garland to win his individual mismatch against lesser on-ball defenders. We’ve seen Garland do this in this matchup before. He needs to do it consistently throughout the series for the Cavaliers to generate any half-court offense.

A good last minute of a game can change the perception of the preceding 47 minutes. No one remembers Garland’s four turnovers last week against Indiana — they just remember his game-saving shot over Pascal Siakam.

The same is true about a good postseason. Garland has had a season from hell. But a few weeks of playing like the guy we saw the previous two years and have only saw glimpses of recently could change the way his season feels.