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Let’s Get Excited About Isaiah Hartenstein


The Cavaliers are entering the home stretch of the season with about 20 games left in what has been an eventful year. Considering the new COVID guidelines, the Kevin Porter Jr drama, the Drummond sittings, and the countless injuries, little about this season has been normal. After a brutal schedule for most of the year, things are starting to get a little easier for the Cavs, who have one of the least difficult remaining schedules in the league. With the new 7-10 seed play-ins that the NBA added for this season, Cleveland is very much still alive as things get down to crunch time, despite their recent beat-down from the Raptors.


Just as has been the case all year, the team isn’t quite at full health yet, with Jarrett Allen, Larry Nance Jr, and Dylan Windler being the one’s missing time, but the lack of frontcourt depth has allowed the team’s only trade deadline addition to receive some immediate legitimate playing time. He’s averaged 24 minutes per game, despite only starting one of his 6 matches played with the Cavaliers.


The Cavs were reportedly hoping to get a 2nd Rd Pick back in a trade for JaVale McGee. They ended up getting 2. And this Hartenstein guy receiving only 9 minutes per game was thrown in. A 22-year old former 2nd Round pick, he was originally viewed as the afterthought of the trade. A few games in, and he’s looking like potentially the best player in the deal, not to mention he’s 11-years younger than McGee.


Koby Altman may have added another fledgling member to a rapidly expanding young-core, along with fellow fan favorites like Lamar Stevens and Dean Wade who have made strong impressions when receiving playing-time this season, all for a bargain price, reminiscent of the Jarrett Allen deal.


What an impression he’s made.


As the only healthy interior-presence for the Cavs right now, he’s made a very noticeable impact. So far, the big man has more than doubled his career bests in:

  • points (4.6 —> 10.3)
  • rebounds (3.9 —> 9.3)
  • assists (1.1 —> 3.8)
  • blocks (0.5 —> 1.7)

Harty has always been regarded as a guy who plays hard. Not one to lack aggressiveness or back down from challenges. That comes in handy as a deterrent at the rim or when crashing the boards, but it’s come back to bite him in the butt often.


Over Isaiah’s 3-year career before arriving in Cleveland, he averaged an insane 7.4 fouls per 36 minutes. He’s gotten that down to 4.8 per 36 as a Cav, but it’s still an area that it’s evident that he has to be more careful in. He has a tendency to be very physical in his shot contests. Believe it or not, this might be an area where he should want to take a note from Kevin Love’s book defensively. Sometimes (who am I kidding, a lot of the time) Love is late to get in position to contest a shot, so he just cuts his losses and bails on even trying to do anything about it. Normally, that’s better than jumping in not quickly enough and risking a potential and-1.


Despite the fouls, he’s still a capable defender. Harty is a 7-footer with a 7’2” wingspan who rarely gives the opposition an easy bucket at the cup. He should be serviceable on that end for a long time in the league, so long as he doesn’t consistently foul himself out of games. That’s an area where he certainly doesn’t resemble his past teammate with the Nuggets, Nikola Jokic. However, on the offensive side of things... it starts to become more apparent that the two might have spent a lot of time with each other in Denver.


At least to the best of my knowledge, and I like to consider myself an NBA nerd, passing has never been considered an elite strength for Isaiah Hartenstein. I don’t know if this is something new for him or just something he’s never really been able to showcase, but his facilitation has been incredible. He’s racking up 5.8 assists per 36 minutes, good for 3rd best on the team, behind Cleveland’s 2 point guards, Delly and Garland. He’s not only made some fantastic passes, he’s also taking good care of the ball, only turning it over 1.3 times per 36, also good for 3rd on the team, behind only Delly and Wade.


He’s done an excellent job of seeing the floor whether he’s been posting-up or facing-up. The 3rd year-pro has even flashed the ability to self-create, shooting nearly 70% on 16 shot attempts when driving to the cup so far, while also displaying the ability to kick the ball out to the open man off of those drives. Obviously this is all a small sample size, but the film is extremely encouraging.


Although it looks like he’s breaking his back while doing it, Harty gets low and tightens his handle when he attacks the basket. With some of the best passing big-men in the league by his side, in Kevin Love and Larry Nance Jr, there’s optimism that he can continue to improve in that regard, as well.


The Cavs’ center rotation to start out the season consisted of 2 guys, Andre Drummond and JaVale McGee, who believed that they could do all the things Hartenstein has been able to successfully do, but reality didn’t quite agree with them. Drummond and McGee’s respective turnovers/36 (4.0 and 3.2), plus their FGA/36 and FG% (18.9, 47.4% and 15.4, 52.1) are enough alone to know that watching them was an eyesore.


The hope is obviously that Isaiah is able to keep on effectively doing what he’s shown so far. If not, we may be due for another rough-going at the 5-position.


But so far? I’m loving it. His Cavalier debut has coincided with the return of Kevin Love and Matthew Dellavedova to the rotation and the team’s offense has instantly become exponentially more dynamic. All 3 are high-level passers and overall high-IQ guys, who have welcomed a new flood of off-ball movement to an otherwise stale offense for most of the season.


As the Cavs look to make a last second push for the final play-in spot in the exceedingly mediocre Eastern Conference, Harty’s continued production will be entirely necessary, especially for as long as Jarrett Allen is out with his concussion. As for me, his new #1 fan, I can’t wait to watch him continue to grow in each and every game.

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