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The Cleveland Cavaliers won their first championship in 2016, and they are hoping for a much shorter wait until their next title. If the team wants to avoid another lengthy drought until before their next celebratory parade, they’ll need one of their young players to step up and have a breakout season.
Emoni Bates is entering his second professional season and will miss the early going after having surgery to repair a torn meniscus. Bates should be back by the All-Star break, though, and could even return by New Year's if everything goes according to plan. Bates isn't being talked about enough, in part because of his injury. Here’s why Bates could come out of nowhere and shock the world this season.
Emoni Bates will have a breakout season
Bates is one of the youngest players on the Cavaliers' roster, but he is oozing with upside. He brings an in-demand skillset to the table and just needs to gain more experience and maturity to put everything together. In limited playing time, Bates has shown flashes of his potential and demonstrated why scouts were so excited by him when he was just a young high school player.
The Cavs need one more young star
The Cavaliers' roster currently features two star players in Darius Garland and Donovan Mitchell. Garland is a homegrown talent who is incredibly explosive and rapidly developing as a shooter. He’s made strides and is now solidly above average as an outside threat while also proving his patience and judgment as a passer.
Garland came into the league with high promise but has really put in the work to excel in all areas of the game. He knows when to call his own number as well as when and how to get his teammates involved. He knows when to get aggressive and press the issue to put stress on the defense as well as when to play it safe and focus on not turning the ball over.
Garland has developed into an excellent shooter as his career has progressed. When he came out of college, Garland was known throughout the pre-draft process as a player with an incredibly beautiful looking jump shot, but somebody who needed to continue to work on hitting shots from long range against NBA competition in high-pressure situations.
His work in this area has been a resounding success and Garland now commands the respect of opposing defenses anytime he has the ball on the perimeter. He also has a lethal combination of ballhandling ability and athleticism that he leverages to get past the defense and into the lane where he has a crafty and versatile layup package, as well as an elite floater.
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Garland‘s floater is a potent weapon because he has such a graceful touch with it. This move is nearly unblockable and the only way to stop it is to prevent Garland from getting into the lane in the first place. This means defenders have to be wary of his speed and give him extra room on the perimeter. That in turn makes it easier for Garland to create space for pull-up jumpers from beyond the arc.
The Cavs acquired Donovan Mitchell in a blockbuster deal with the Utah Jazz and he has been spectacular during his time in Cleveland. Mitchell is an incredibly gifted scorer, but he struggles defensively and can sometimes run into efficiency issues with his jumper due to his lack of size at the shooting guard position.
Who is Emoni Bates?
Emoni Bates is a 6-foot-9 small forward who is just 20 years old. At one time, Bates was viewed as the undisputed best high school player in the country in his class and the surefire first-overall pick in the future. Unfortunately for Bates, his collegiate career did not go as planned. He struggled heavily at Auburn and transferred to Eastern Michigan.
While with Eastern Michigan, Bates revived his career on the court, but also battled legal issues off the court, most notably a gun charge. The combination of Bates’ legal issues and unproven ability against high-level competition led him to fall all the way to the second round of the NBA draft, where the Cavaliers selected the young wing and signed him to a two-way contract.
Bates has spent considerable time in the G-League building his game and has had moments at the NBA level where he showed why the Cavaliers were willing to take a flyer on him and have patience through the growing pains.
Bates’ greatest strength is an unteachable gift
Standing at 6-foot-9 and boosting a high release point on his jump shot, Bates’ greatest strength is not actually his shotmaking. That is certainly important, but what really makes him unique is his ability to get a clean look at the rim against almost any defender. This is because he releases the ball at a point where very few defenders have a credible chance of blacking or disrupting his shot.
He also has good-looking mechanics and is able to convert these looks at a high rate. It’s certainly high praise and a nearly impossible bar to reach, but there is a world in which Bates becomes a lite version of Kevin Durant. That kind of progression would certainly qualify as a breakout season.
