Draft Gambles, Shake Shack Dreams, Ugly Jerseys, and Near-Death in Sexland, USA
Cleveland’s backcourt is finally sharing the rock and leaning into the theatrics of the NBA
I was born yesterday, and it’s clear to me that Collin Sexton is the best player from the 2018 NBA Draft. It’s also clear to me that — when at the top of his game — Darius Garland is probably the 10th best player from the 2019 NBA Draft. Together, the two players are many things. A carbon-copy of Damian Lillard and C.J. McCollum. They are a conflict of interest, given their individual desires to navigate an offense and the way those desires intersect jaggedly sometimes. Garland, a Vanderbilt guard taken way too high with little defensive prowess. Sexton, an Alabaman slasher also without defensive prowess. On paper, they don’t work. And sometimes, on the court, they also don’t work.
Sexton was drafted to play point guard. The Cavs’ 1st supposed franchise cornerstone after the LeBron era. While at Alabama, Sexton once dropped 40 points on Minnesota — in a game where the Crimson Tide only had three players on the court for the entirety of the 2nd half. He’s always been a messy kind of electric, with his incredible hair and the fear he instills in every fan when he drives down the lane and puts up a heavily-contested layup. But that’s his thing: the uncertainty of an inside shot, never a gimme, which was his only shot during his rookie and sophomore campaigns.
Garland played just four full games during his only season at Vanderbilt before tearing his meniscus against Kent State. He is an outside scorer by trade, wedging himself within the swelling archetypical landscape of young point guards. When NBA games had fans in attendance, Garland would shoot the pill with limitless range during warm-ups. His pre-draft workouts were stellar and reminiscent of Trae Young’s. And, especially in a shooter’s league, nobody was blaming Cleveland for going all-in on Garland. Despite not having an elite quickness, he created shots. He could finish in traffic, run the pick-and-roll like butter slipping off a hot knife, and even knock-down the occasional corner three with a hand in his face.
But what Sexton and Garland couldn’t do last year gave fans rightful hesitation. Their combined lack of defense, passing inability, and absence of height — both guards are 6’2” — all warranted the criticisms they evoked. Having two guards who couldn’t keep up with their defensive assignments or lean far enough into their offensive games eventually led to Cleveland making an unflashy selection in the 2020 Draft when they picked up Isaac Okoro, a defend-first forward, with the 5th overall pick — passing over players with more finesse, players like Obi Toppin and Deni Avdija.
And when the Cavs drafted Garland, there was this expectation that he would stay healthy and learn how to become an instinctive passer and lean on feeding Sexton the ball in space. It didn’t happen in 2019. That season, Garland averaged only 3.9 assists a game and Sexton peaked with an average of 20.8 points a game. There was clear miscommunication every night, and an unspoken failure in getting them to share the offensive load. Bad field goal percentages, horrible defensive splits, and below-position-average guard numbers were poised to haunt the duo going into 2021.
But it’s 2021 now, and these two are not what anyone expected. Of course, Garland is still fighting leg injuries. Before he went down with a calf problem, he was averaging 16 and 6, finally looking like the court general the team hoped he’d blossom into. Him and Sexton, who now uses his raw athleticism to be one of the purest scorers in the league, are now a force in the East. A force so intense, and so enjoyable to watch, that they’ve been virally dubbed: SEXLAND. Flashes of offensive patience from both, a newfound chemistry with each other, and maybe a bit of maturity on both sides, along with some defensive upgrades in the frontcourt, have given these guys the space to lean into what they have always done best, while also adding new badges to their resumes. As it sits, Sexton is 9th in the NBA in scoring, which is good, given the rising league-wide PPG numbers. He’s even putting up 4 assists a game, a whole tick higher than his career average of 3. Garland brings the ball down the court and looks for an open man now, no longer hinging himself on being responsible for putting up shots, contested or not. In a league continuing to navigate a pandemic and whatever uncertainty comes with it, Garland and Sexton are quickly, and subtly, becoming what everyone had long written off as impossible.
So, as it turns out, two things in this world are certain: Shake Shack is top-tier and the Cleveland Cavaliers’ 2020–21 city jerseys are atrocious. Shake Shack, which, thankfully, has gluten-free buns, is undefeated. The city jerseys, which were designed as a collaged, vague attempt at an homage to Cleveland’s rock and roll history, are not undefeated. They look like a child took a crayon to an NBA player’s chest:
The way I dream about Shake Shack, the way I can smell it from 4.7 miles away, is a burden I carry daily. In Cleveland there’s a lone Shack Shack on Euclid Avenue, just a few steps west from Playhouse Square. The cheeseburgers. The fries. The milkshakes. There’s never an open parking space nearby, only tiny nooks fit for bikes or vacancies beside fire hydrants no one is willing to risk a tow over. Of course, there are better local delicacies in town. Hairy Buffalo, The Winking Lizard, Hot Sauce Williams. Tourists flock to those places like Ohio wildfire, long-engrossed in the fragility of missing out on Cleveland specialties. There is nothing touristy about a chain restaurant. There are Shake Shacks all over the country.
But what’s your spot is your spot, and the Shake Shack on Euclid, where my buddy Alex and I took shelter after nearly witnessing the murder of Kevin Love by Ja Morant in 2019, is ours. The Grizzlies were in town, and there was a moment in the 1st half of the game when Morant decided to cut down the lane. Kevin Love, who, by all means, is nothing but a washed, overpriced contract with legs, and has been ever since he arrived in Cleveland, decided to sidestep into the lane to provide defense, I guess, and almost got postered with one of the most disgusting slam dunks that never was. Morant lept from a step or two inside the foul line, spread his arms into the Jordan swingman, and nearly delivered the dagger, missing by maybe an inch, or, perhaps, the unfortunate circumstance of it not being his time, at least not yet. It was the kind of near-death experience that makes you appreciate the low success-rate of final blows. And it beckons: Why can’t my team be that murderous? There is probably some kind of divinity in coincidence. It’s the only explanation for washing down a crime scene with Coca-Cola and a ShackBurger we merely happened upon through our iPhone GPS, in a tired attempt to appease our post-game munchies.
And so, at the time of this writing, as the Cavs are gearing up to play the Brooklyn Nets, I am wrestling with whether or not to endure a 73-minute wait to have Shake Shack DoorDashed to my apartment 5 miles away. I am also wrestling with the Cavs, themselves, who, somehow, must still believe their city jerseys look beautiful, as they emerge from the cavern of their locker room donning their ugliness. I pass on Shake Shack and decide to get it tomorrow, to make a day out of a trek down High Street, because Collin Sexton is making a mockery out of the NBA’s new superteam.
Tonight is special, regardless of Sexton’s outburst, because it’s the 1st time Kyrie Irving has played the Cavs since leaving in 2017. His three years of coincidental avoidance due to injury is over. And he brought his friends, James Harden and Kevin Durant, as backup. Darius Garland is out of the lineup again, still nursing that lingering calf injury, so Sexton has every key to the offense tonight, and he’s making the most of it.
If you’ve played basketball, you know that it takes a long time to earn your self-assurance when weaving through the lane — especially if you’re the smallest guy on the court. I can only assume it takes longer to earn it in the NBA, and I’m certain even the best players in the world take longer than others. What came so naturally to Luka Doncic clearly did not come as naturally to Collin Sexton.
But tonight, Collin is doing whatever the hell he wants with the self-assurance of a vet. He blocks a fast-break attempt by Durant (cool). He beats Kyrie on a shimmy move in the paint (great). He drives the lane, checks his surroundings, sees a few defenders, and doesn’t biff the lay-in under pressure (fuck yeah). He turns Cedi Osman’s airball 3-pointer into a sexy alley-oop (fuck yeah, but a second time). During the game, Sexton’s rookie card skyrockets in value on eBay. He single-handedly keeps Cleveland hanging around and is responsible for sending the game into overtime.
What must be said about this game is that Sexton, who was, and I’m not making this up, deemed a bust by Cavs Fandom Twitter at one point last season, is destroying the most-hyped team in basketball on a Wednesday night. On Kyrie’s 1st return to Cleveland, no less. Kyrie, who, I guess, just decided not to play defense tonight, quickly became the victim of a Collin Sexton jumpshot — a shot so disgusting it rocked social media for a few minutes, and a shot so disgusting it forced the game into a 2nd overtime. And by the start of the 2nd overtime, Sexton is just running laps around Brooklyn. Sexton even delivers the death blow jump shot, his 20th point in a row, it’s the kind of death that makes you appreciate the rarity of successful final blows. And all of this, this almighty undoing of a superteam hellbent on primadonna success and finesse, is being done while wearing ugly jerseys.
I live on the busiest street in Columbus. The world just outside my apartment window is always alive and breathing. When Collin Sexton scores that 20th point in a row, a nasty jumpshot over Jeff Green with no resilience, an ambulance screams past my block. It could be a response to anything. The death rate in Columbus was about 20 people per day before COVID-19. It’s even higher now. But someone downtown could have watched Sexton drop that stunning jumper over Kyrie, just a few minutes before that endgame dagger over Green, and keeled over from a heart-attack immediately after. It probably isn’t that, but it could be. There is noise crawling through my window from the direction of Short North. I’d like to believe those swelling roars of marauders near the Newport are swelling because of a no-look jumper. That it’s not just a normal Wednesday night of partying for Ohio State students at the Midway.
Back in December, the Cavs posted a call on social media asking the fans to throw out some ideas on a new nickname for the team’s young backcourt. Long before that call, Clevelanders and basketball voyeurs alike had already christened the two guards as SEXLAND. Sexton and Garland even celebrated their new nickname, too. No other guard combo in the league can mold halves of their last names together to create one delicious beast. But the Cavs were quick to censor the nickname and toss it back into the world as just a good name for a fantasy basketball team and nothing legitimate. There was never a chance in hell of Sexland being partitioned by the organization as official when they always treated it like a kiss of death.
Sexland is not the kiss of death the Cavs organization has deemed it to be, because the kiss of death has already been making out with Cleveland for a long time.
But, just as there’s an allure to the LOUDVILLE banner pasted across the backsplash behind the nosebleed seats of Rocket Mortgage Fieldhouse, there’s something irresistible about the thought of walking into The Rock and seeing SEXLAND glinted across a railing above the lower-level. A mystifying adoption of nightclub heroics. Wine and navy-colored nacho chips and bottomless Jaeger bombs. The promise of free Arby’s curly fries if the away team misses both free throws. Austin Carr, Mr. Cavalier himself, replacing his Deep in The Rock call with At the border of Sexland and Loudville. All of it second-rate, a self-glorification of dismissal and the illegitimacy of its own existence. The combination of Sexton and Garland shouldn’t work, but it does. Sexland shouldn’t work, but it does.
And Sexland is not just a nickname; it’s a prophecy — to rebuild a kingdom that once consumed all the spoils of glitter and gold. Before the BP Oil Spill, you could walk outside the arena and see that big Sherwin-Williams LeBron James mural across the street. You know the one: the arms outstretched, the welcoming arrival of all who cross the Hope Memorial Bridge into town. Now it’s all parking garages and floundering casino relics. Playhouse Square overrun by burrito bowls and travel magazine splendor.
Sexland is not the kiss of death the Cavs organization has deemed it to be, because the kiss of death has already been making out with Cleveland for a long time. The post-LeBron era is downtown failing economically, because the Sinito family wanted to restore Euclid Avenue into more than just a historical district. And “more” just means prized legacy banks becoming exotic seafood restaurants, a higher rent inland, and a spike in homelessness as you get closer to the water. Hell, the Garfield Building, Cleveland’s first skyscraper, built in 1893, is now an upscale eatery.
Of course, the indoctrination of Sexland does not, and will not, cure Cleveland of its systematic unraveling. A sudden limelight cast on its skyline is nothing more than a remembrance of beauty broken by abandonment. Forever a picture of a Buffalo river on fire, Cleveland is the Mistake on the Lake. A punchline ripped from the loins of what I can only deduce as karma for local rapper and aspiring actor Machine Gun Kelly opening an expensive coffee shop on West 10th during a pandemic. But what Sexland does is offer hope, in whatever form a fan can fashion it into. It signals something new and something worth rooting for. Both are things Cleveland so desperately needs and deserves.
That hope still carries. Darius Garland will be 100% again soon. The chemistry between him and Collin Sexton will return again. There are no title expectations on their shoulders yet, because Cleveland is still a few pieces away from being any kind of threat in the East. That’s why they aren’t Lillard and McCollum. Right now, they are free of any insertion into the Dawinized world of the NBA Playoffs. No clear paths to a championship, just the opportunity to continue learning who they are. And maybe Sexland will never be Lillard and McCollum. Maybe they will never get to the playoffs. But there’s something there, and what makes it even more magical is no one can seem to figure out what the fuck that something is.
The funny thing is: the kiss of death isn’t always a death, but sometimes an embrace lingering with you, always. In a few days, it’ll be a belly overflowing with Shake Shack leftovers and sirens disappearing into winter dark. But tonight, it’s a young bull, just a dozen games into his 3rd season, gleaning paint moves from the point guards who’ve come before him into his own game, delivering staggering blows, one-by-one, from every inch of the court, slowly summoning the gaze of the whole world back onto him and his beloved city.
