Cleveland Cavaliers: Advanced stats misrepresent Collin Sexton

Though Collin Sexton felt like a bright spot in a dark season for the Cleveland Cavaliers, his advanced metrics say otherwise.

In the wake of losing LeBron James, the Cleveland Cavaliers were destined for an ugly 2018-19 NBA season. Finishing with a 19-63 record, the Cavs proved to be the second-worst team in the league.

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However, due to some solid performances from their rookie, Collin Sexton, the franchise left this disaster with hope.

Sexton ended his rookie season strongly, averaging 23.1 points and 3.4 assists per game on 43.8 percent shooting from deep and a 51.4 percent field goal percentage throughout 21 games.

This second-half surge helped him earn a spot on the All-Rookie Second-Team. He even managed to get a subtle sign of approval from legendary head-coach, Gregg Popovich.

Despite his success as a scorer late in the season, Sexton’s advanced metrics are as bad as they get. A recent article by Zach Kram of The Ringer touches briefly on just how poor Sexton is according to advanced statistics.

The Young Bull finished near the bottom of the league in multiple areas. Especially bad in anything regarding defense. A new stat called “Draymond” that was created by Nate Silver of FiveThiryEight evaluates how effective a player is on the defensive end.

Sexton ranked dead last in the NBA with a Draymond score of -3.59.

In addition to this, Sexton had the second-worst defensive Real Plus-Minus in the league behind only Trae Young, who is considered one of the worst rookie defenders of all-time.

Sexton also ranked near the bottom of the barrel in net rating, defensive rating and turnover ratio (Per NBA.com).

Looking at these numbers, it would be easy to call Sexton the worst player in the entire league. So, how is it that someone this bad could have been named to the All-Rookie team? Was last year’s draft class that weak?

Or is it because these advanced metrics don’t represent the type of player Sexton is?

Something is wrong here. Today, we need to take a deep look into his rookie season and evaluate the credibility of advanced metrics.