Cavaliers sting Hornets 121-114

 The Cleveland Cavaliers backcourt had been much maligned in the nine months since the Cavaliers played their last contest by basketball analytics and traditional scouting.

Perhaps the second season together for Collin Sexton and Darius Garland will show the chemistry that was missing in their first season as a pairing as Sexton scored 27 points and Garland scored 22 as the Cavaliers won their opener 121-114 over the Charlotte Hornets in Cleveland.

The Cavaliers had seven players in double-figures scoring, including all five starters.

Cleveland will be off until Saturday when they will play at Detroit as the front part of consecutive road games with the latter trip seeing the team travel to Philadelphia.

Swashbucklings

1)  Darius Garland looked like a different player in the opener as he was passing the ball well (six assists) and shooting well from three-point range as Garland hit four of eight attempts.

Should Garland continue to look like the guy that showed up last night, then Cleveland may be able to 

play Garland at the point, which has been a question in the offseason.

2) Garland also worked harder on the defensive end.

Now, Terry Dozier lit the Cavaliers up for 42 points and hit 10 (TEN!) three-pointers, many of those while being guarded by Garland (and when not Collin Sexton), so the news wasn't all good, but much of defense is having the effort to want to play defense.

Let's see if Garland can put forward that effort every night, but one has to start somewhere.

3) Collin Sexton scored points last season (twenty a night), but he did it in a way that didn't help a team in need in any way other than the stat sheet.

Sexton played better without the ball in his hands and moved without the ball to keep the offense flowing through him, not stopping with him.

4) Sexton hit his first six shots in the game, finished with three from three-point range, and added five assists.

Collin Sexton will score points in this league.

That much is a given, the bigger questions include what else will he bring to your team.
Sexton has time to be more than the top scorer on a bad team, this season is key in seeing his game begin to be more than one-dimensional.

5) J.B. Bickerstaff preaches ball movement in the offense and by keeping the ball moving, there will be more open shots.

It goes to figure that an open shot is easier to hit than a contested version and that helped Cleveland hit 14 three-pointers and shoot 46 percent from behind the arc.

It worked well in the opener and Charlotte was kept off-balance most of the evening defensively.

6) Isaac Okoro's debut showed his potential and it's not all about his 11 pts (4 for 5 with a 3 pointer) ether.

Okoro's defense was what was rated so highly entering the draft and you can see why as at one time during the game when Terry Dozier was ripping the Cavaliers raw, J.B. Bickerstaff called on Okoro to guard Dozier for a while.

Okoro didn't really do any better than anyone else, but to have the rookie in his first game be looked at as the defensive stopper makes me think that the reputation is factually based.

7) The defense still needs lots of work.

It seemed like Charlotte ran about fifty ( more like five) alley-oops to the rim in the second quarter with no one around to contest any of these.

It does seem that often teams don't even try to stop these because the players don't want to be "posterized" when they are actually only trying to make a play.

8) I'll be doing more Cavalier coverage this season.

I sprung (Sprang?) for the NBA on-line league pass since they offered a one team package at a reduced cost.

I realize that I'm likely paying for a lot of losing games, but I have to give myself something to do and for now, we are still playing games.

Let's get through these next few months, the light at the end of the tunnel may be dim but it is there.