CLEVELAND, Ohio (92.3 The Fan) – Even though they’re a game below .500, the Cavaliers are one of the NBA’s surprises early in the season.
But not to Collin Sexton.
The Cavaliers’ guard, who is in his third season, penned a lengthy essay for The Players’ Tribune published Wednesday in which Sexton detailed his rise to stardom from when he first burst onto the national basketball scene at the age of 17.
Sexton wrote about the difficulties of suffering through Cleveland’s painful rebuild his first two seasons that saw them win 19 games in each of them.
“I think that’s one of the things people don’t really pay enough attention to, when they talk about a ‘rebuild’ or whatever you want to call it,” Sexton wrote. “Like, yeah, it might seem easy on paper, to have a few bad years, put some draft picks together, and become good again. But I don’t think those people talking about it like that really understand how hard it is. Those “rebuild” seasons….. they don’t happen on paper. They happen in real life. Real dudes have to go out there and take those Ls — and those Ls take a toll.”
Getting left out of the NBA bubble last year was the ultimate snub, which Sexton noted was earned, and it was used as motivation.
“It’s not like any of us thought we got snubbed or anything,” Sexton wrote. “Our record was what it was, and we owned that. We knew we deserved to be at home. But even with that said….. it was frustrating, man. It was like, for the first time in two years, we finally were putting something together. We’d finally picked up some momentum. And then the season went on pause.”
Sexton credits head coach J.B. Bickerstaff, who took over after John Beilein stepped down, for the team’s turnaround last year that saw them win five of 11 before the pause.
“When Coach took over, everything just finally started to fall into place,” Sexton wrote.
Sexton is averaging 24.1 points per game and shooting just under 50% from the field earning him legitimate consideration for an All-Star roster spot in year three.
“The team that used to have LeBron,” that has been written off as Sexton put it, are 10-11, but if the playoffs started Wednesday, they’d be in as the No. 7 seed in the East.
Pointing to back-to-back wins over the Brooklyn Nets last month, the No. 8 overall pick in the 2018 NBA Draft believes he and the Cavs have turned a corner.
“We’re back on the map,” Sexton wrote.
Read Sexton’s full essay HERE.
