Cleveland Cavaliers: 3 x-factors that will determine their success

Cleveland Cavaliers X-Factors: Shooting from Cedi Osman and Dylan Windler

3-point shooting will be the biggest vice the Cleveland Cavaliers need to overcome this season. As talented as this roster is, spacing is one thing they are not particularly great at.

Last season, a total of 107 players connected on at least 100 3-pointers. The Cavaliers had just one player who passed that threshold with Darius Garland netting 105 made 3-pointers, making him the league’s 90th best shooter in terms of pure totals. To no surprise, Cleveland ranked as the NBA’s second-worst 3-point shooting team overall.

How did this happen? Well, Garland may be efficient but he has yet to become a volume shooter. The same goes for Collin Sexton. Both members of Sexland have steadily increased their output each season and we can expect another step forward this year. However, it is the rest of the roster that is not so certain.

In particular, Dylan Windler and Cedi Osman will make or break the Cavaliers’ 3-point shooting woes. We already know what to expect from the backcourt and we can confidently assume Kevin Love, Dean Wade and Lauri Markkanen will, at the very least, be reliable shooters when they are on the floor. Windler and Osman have not built up that reputation just yet.

Osman had the worst shooting season of his career, dropping to just 30.6 percent efficiency despite hitting the second-most 3-pointers on the team. Osman’s shot was ugly for most of the year with routine airballs causing his confidence to plummet. However, this poor performance is still an outlier in regards to the rest of his career (36.4 percent shooter before this season).

Unless the Cavs secure a more talented wing, Osman can expect to be a frequent member of the rotation. Because of this, the Cavaliers will be hoping to see a return to form for Osman who was shaping up to be a fairly decent catch-and-shoot threat the year before. In many ways, this is a make-or-break season for the Turkish prospect.

What about Windler? The 25-year-old hasn’t even played half of a full NBA season but his small sample size hasn’t been too reassuring. Windler struggled in his honorary rookie stint, shooting 33.8 percent from deep. Nevertheless, Windler has dealt with nagging injuries and hardly played more than two weeks of professional basketball without a setback. There is still reason to hope Windler can emerge as a true sniper at some point.

Windler and Osman are the difference between Cleveland having just a few floor spacers and having a reasonable collection of shooters. Their potential value is through the roof for one of the league’s worst shooting teams.