Cavaliers’ top draft pick Ochai Agbaji is getting rave reviews for the way he is playing in the NBA Summer League in Las Vegas.
Agbaji, selected with the 14th overall pick last month, played 33 minutes on July 8 when the Cavaliers beat the San Antonio Spurs, 99-90. He scored 16 points and connected on 4 of 9 shots from beyond the arc.
The 6-foot-5 guard/forward from Kansas was not as sharp on July 10 in an 84-76 loss to the Denver Nuggets. Agbaji was 3-of-11 shooting and 2 of 6 in 3-point tries in 33 minutes. He missed his only free-throw attempt.
The question became, how would Agbaji respond from his lackluster game? He gave he Cavaliers brain trust an emphatic answer.
Agbaji followed up his game against the Nuggets by pouring in 24 points in a 91-80 loss to the Charlotte Hornets on July 10 when he was 7 of 13 from the floor. He made 4 of 8 three-point attempts.
The Cavaliers were scheduled to play the Pistons on July 14 in their fourth game of the summer in the league designed to spotlight rookies and young players trying to gain playing time and impress their coaches and general managers.
The final score in the Summer League games is secondary to how individuals perform. Evan Mobley, Jarrett Allen, Darius Garland and other prominent Cavaliers are not participating. It is the same for every team in the league.
Agbaji had three rebounds and two assists to go with his 16 points in the game with the Spurs. He was 5 of 11 shooting overall.
“He proved to the NBA world that he could not only knock down catch-and-shoot 3s, but create his own looks from deep, too,” Kirk Goldsberry of ESPN.com wrote. “Agbaji looked confident in his debut. (He) has the potential to become an elite 3-point scorer, and his debut didn’t do anything but support that claim.”
The report Agbaji created his own looks is encouraging, because the knock on him heading into the draft was an inability to do that is a reason he lasted as long as he did on draft night.
“While he doesn’t have many defensive limitations, Agbaji’s offensive ceiling is capped,” lineups.com wrote in its pre-draft scouting report. “He cannot reliably create for himself off the dribble, which means he requires teammates to set his shot up.”
Agbaji played four seasons at Kansas. His maturity was one of the qualities that made him attractive to Cavaliers president of basketball operations Koby Altman.
Unlike Oklahoma rookie center Chet Holmgren who modestly predicted he will be the best player in the NBA “in two months,” Agbaji told ESPN after his strong effort against the Spurs that he still has much work to do.
“It was all right,” Agbaji said in the ESPN interview. “There’s a lot of shots I left out there, a lot of missed opportunities. Overall, it was good. I knew there was a lot of talent on the floor.”
The Cavaliers were 44-38 in 2021-22 and finished eighth in the Eastern Conference in the regular season. Before the play-in tournament was developed in 2020, finishing eighth would have been good enough to qualify for the playoffs. Instead, the Cavs were shut out of the postseason because they were eliminated by the Nets and Hawks in the play-in tournament.
Breaking into the lineup of a team good enough to play for a postseason berth could be difficult, but Altman said he expects Agbaji to contribute immediately. The rookie is showing in the Summer League that Altman’s words are more than just wishful thinking.
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