The Cleveland Cavaliers haven’t reached the NBA playoffs without LeBron James in the lineup since 1998, when former Brantley High School and Auburn standout Wesley Person was the team’s No. 2 scorer.
James is four years gone from the Cavs, but injured guard Collin Sexton isn’t ruling out returning for Cleveland in the postseason – and he means the 2022 playoffs.
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The former Alabama standout hasn’t played since Nov. 7, when Sexton suffered a meniscus tear playing against the New York Knicks. He had surgery to repair the knee injury on Nov. 18 and was considered lost for the season.
“When I’m feeling 100 percent and when my body tells me I’m ready,” Sexton told cleveland.com on Tuesday about his timetable. “When my body tells me I’m at a good place and a good time, that’s when I’m going to give it a go. …
“When we make the postseason, we will see. Definitely, we’ll see.”
By beating Milwaukee 115-99 on Wednesday night, Cleveland passed the defending NBA champion Bucks into fourth place in the Eastern Conference standings with a 30-19 record. The Cavaliers had a 22-50 record last season.
“At the end of the day, we all got tired of losing,” Sexton said during a Tuesday interview with WOIO-TV. “Whenever you get tired of losing, there comes a time, you’re just ‘All right, we don’t want to have this feeling each and every night. We don’t want to come in being that team where people feel like they can just run all over us or just beat us whenever.’
“This year, I think it’s been a change of culture and just change of mindset.”
Sexton said his rehab had “been going really good.”
“I want to come back 100 percent on the court,” Sexton said, “and I know here in Cleveland I’m going to bring that toughness, I’m going to bring that grit, I’m going to bring that energy that they deserve and they need. I know when I come back, I’m going to be ready to go mentally as well as physically and just do whatever is needed, whether it’s on offense to score buckets, or just on defense to get stops or even just make assists, so we’ll see.”
After joining Cleveland as the eighth pick in the 2018 draft, Sexton had been the Cavaliers’ leading point producer in the previous three seasons. In the 2020-21 campaign, he boosted his scoring average to 24.3 points per game after scoring 16.7 as a rookie and 20.8 in the 2019-2020 season.
Sexton’s scoring average last season was the highest ever posted by an Alabama alumnus in an NBA season, surpassing the 24.2 points per game averaged by Latrell Sprewell for the Golden State Warriors in the 1996-97 campaign.
Sexton averaged 16.0 points in 11 games this season.
Sexton is on course to become a restricted free agent at the end of the season after he and the Cavaliers failed to meet an Oct. 18 deadline on contract extensions for first-round choices in the 2018 NBA Draft.
After this season, Sexton will become a restricted free agent if the Cavaliers make the required qualifying offer of $8.56 million for the 2022-23 season.
Sexton could sign that one-year contract with Cleveland on his way to becoming an unrestricted free agent in 2023, or he could sign a contract offer from another team, which the Cavaliers would have the opportunity to match if they want to retain Sexton.
Mark Inabinett is a sports reporter for Alabama Media Group. Follow him on Twitter at @AMarkG1.
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