Cleveland Cavaliers: Advanced stats misrepresent Collin Sexton

Thrown into the fire

From the start of his career, Collin Sexton was thrust into a dumpster fire. With no stability and a horrible cast of defenders around him, it makes sense that he ranked near the bottom of the league in advanced statistics.

Overall, Sexton had a usage rate of 24.7 percent, making him the 56th-most used player in the league and the seventh-most used rookie. Combine this with how poor the Cleveland Cavaliers were as a whole and it’s no wonder his advanced metrics look bad.

Most of the criticism for Sexton should be taken with a grain of salt when you consider that he was thrown into the fire far before he was ready. Sexton was quickly given the starting position on a team that was in a free fall towards rock bottom.

With Kevin Love injured, a new head coach and not much of a supporting cast, Sexton was expected to make something out of nothing.

This is a task that would be difficult for any rookie, let alone a player who wasn’t projected to be a superstar. Consequently, the first few months of the season were brutal for Sexton as he learned the game on the fly.

Early in the year, Collin had a 21-game stretch in which he averaged 15.7 points and 2.3 turnovers per game on an awful 29.2 percent shooting from the 3-point line.

The NBA hit Sexton like a speeding train. There was nothing that could prepare him for the load he would carry for Cleveland and the attention that he received from opposing defenses. As the Cavaliers progress through their rebuild, Sexton should have less to worry about moving forward.