Season review: Sam Merrill
Merrill capitalized on his chances and showed he belonged in the league.
Sam Merrill came into this season without his spot on the Cleveland Cavaliers secured due to his unguaranteed contract. He not only earned a place on the roster, but one in the rotation for most of the season and into the playoffs. It was an overwhelming success for someone who considered giving up on his NBA dream before the 2022-23 season. Merrill showed that he, and his lethal shot, belong in the league.
The overlapping skillset of the Cavs’ four best players has required the role players orbiting around them to fill many of their flaws. Merrill doesn’t have the most well-rounded skill set, but he certainly helped their outside shooting deficiency.
Merrill got a three-point shot up once every 2.7 minutes he was on the court for the Cavs while knocking down 40.4% of those looks. This translated to 11.9 threes per 36 minutes. He was one of eight players to play more than 500 minutes and take more than 10 threes per 36 minutes. Among those, he trailed only Steph Curry in three-point percentage (40.8%) and volume (13). If you’re going to be a one-skill specialist, you might as well make the most of that skill the way Merrill did.
The Cavs didn’t have many bench players who could truly change a game when they were on. Isaac Okoro shined in certain matchups, Caris LeVert had his rare All-NBA level nights, and Max Strus stole a few games with unconscious shooting. Outside of those rare exceptions, they didn’t have many role players who were capable of having that level of impact.
Merrill showed that he was able to do so. The attention he caused when he was moving off-ball forced defenses to shift and panic in a way that only Donovan Mitchell and Darius Garland could on this team. That was useful even if he wasn’t hitting shots. If he was, the offense became very difficult to contain due to the rim pressure of their bigs.
Merrill’s best stretch came when the team was shorthanded from mid-December through the beginning of February. The Cavs played a much more free-flowing style when there was more room to operate which allowed Merrill’s off-ball movement to shine.
Fitting that style into a fully healthy team became an issue. The Cavs were too stagnant and fell back into the trap of spamming high pick-and-rolls. This made it difficult to move off-ball as you want to create easy reads for your ball handlers when the defense collapses.
Merrill’s shooting was still useful in this context. There’s no situation where you want to help off of him from the strongside corner. But there’s no such thing as a stretch-two. Drawing a guard out of the paint isn’t all that helpful and being confined in the way that Merrill was when the team was fully healthy caused his best skill to be neutralized while highlighting the inherent flaws in his game.
Merrill would’ve benefited greatly from a team that had a better offensive structure that encouraged off-ball movement from the four other players on the floor. Teams run different sets depending on their personnel, but they don’t overhaul their style of play for the eighth or ninth guy in the rotation. That’s what they needed to do to best use Merrill’s off-ball movement. They did so during the injuries in the middle of the season but didn’t when Merrill was getting more spot minutes.
The Cavs’ next coach will need to do a better job of optimizing the offense regardless of how the roster looks. This would seemingly include better leveraging their skill players off the ball which would greatly benefit Merrill when he’s on the court and allow the team to maximize what he brings to the floor.