5 breakout role players

A pair of Cavaliers, a quiet Lakers explosion, and more

The title explains it all. Let’s look at a handful of guys popping in the chaos of the early season.

Sam Merrill and Jaylon Tyson, Cleveland Cavaliers

I want to start by highlighting two Cavaliers who’ve ably taken up larger burdens under Cleveland’s Cavalanche of injuries (nearly every core rotation player has missed some of the season so far).

At this point, there isn’t much that you don’t know about Sam Merrill. The outline is encased in stone, the details are drawn, the coloring shaded in with carefully-sharpened pencils. He’s a 6’4” sniper with a little more defense than you typically see from this archetype. With most players, I like to really dig into the details and quirks that make them fun, but the prior sentence is virtually the entirety of Merrill. Not many unnecessary frills and accoutrements (unlike this frankly self-indulgent paragraph).

What’s noteworthy, however, is just how much Sam Merrill there has been!

Merrill is launching a whopping 16 triples per 100 possessions, which would lag only Steph Curry and, uh, Brook Lopez (!!) among qualifying players as of this writing. The volume is noteworthy (particularly from the left side of the court, where he can space the floor for Donovan Mitchell’s right-dominant driving), but so is the accuracy, as he’s canned more than half of those many, many three-pointers.

Merrill won’t shoot 50% from deep forever, but if he can be a top-five volume guy and maintain a 40% three-point rate, he’ll force Kenny Atkinson to play him big minutes even after the team (and Merrill himself, day-to-day with a hip injury) gets healthy.

I’ll always rent Tyson a soft spot in my heart for making me technically correct on one of last year’s unlikely-but-plausible predictions, and he’s showing out in his first extended stretch of real minutes this year.

After a shaky few games to begin the season, Tyson has found his range and his confidence. In his last three matches, all starts, he’s averaging 18 points per game on 54% shooting from the field and 46% from deep (on big volume). Perhaps even more impressive has been some solid defensive playmaking against big-time opponents.

“I never used to play defense, I was never known as a defender,” Tyson said a few days ago. “Now that I’m starting to, it’s kinda fun. They’re trusting me to big tasks, big time players.”

The motor has stood out. Watch his big chasedown block from a game against the Raptors:

Tyson won’t have to do nearly as much when the team finally gets healthy, but Kenny Atkinson has admitted to seeing him in a new, better light. Depth has become more important than ever before in the NBA, both for surviving the rigors of an increasingly arduous regular season and for having options in the chess battles of the NBA playoffs. Tyson’s proving he’s more than a mere pawn.

Jake LaRavia, Los Angeles Lakers

Jake LaRavia was a popular sleeper pick coming into the season. The Lakers’ top-heavy roster left a lot of opportunity for whichever role players could seize the moment. So far, LaRavia has been grasping the clock with two hands.