He’s cashed in a lottery ticket. He’s not only back in the NBA, he’s starting for the defending champions, making more than $1 million this season with the Cavs holding a team option for slightly more for 2017-18. He is on the floor with multiple All-Stars, every night, until Smith’s thumb fully heals, which probably won’t be until late winter or early spring. On offense, he just has to catch and shoot.

“I’ve got to be ready, with my feet set, hands ready, and knock the shots down,” Liggins said. “I’m gonna be open. Our offense is just be ready to knock shots down, miss or make, and live with the results. My thing is, I put the work in. So I can live with the results, miss or make.”

Being showcased on a winning team can do nothing but help his chances of cashing in in the summer of ’18 for a pretty sizeable contract, either in Cleveland or somewhere else. Two separate league folks last week mentioned Tony Allen as a comparison point for Liggins; Patrick Beverley -- like Liggins and Allen, also a Chicago-native, defense-first guy -- also came up. It’s an amazing sea change in a short period of time.

“I know he’s a really good defender,” Celtics All-Star guard Isaiah Thomas said. “We played against each other in college one time, and I know he puts his hard hat on and really wants to defend. He’s like an Iman Shumpert. I think they’re from the same city and they go about things the same way. “

Liggins has completed multiple domestic violence classes. He says he and Horton are no longer dating, but have a “good friendship,” and jointly raise the couple’s five-year old son, Bracyn. He has visitation rights to see Bracyn without supervision.

He is in regular communication with the NBA’s counseling service, and has never missed or been late for mandated meetings with a domestic violence counselor. Because he was not with an NBA team after pleading guilty to the one count of domestic abuse in 2013, and because he’s been fully compliant since, the NBA did not punish him further.

The Cavaliers, of course, can bring almost anyone on earth to their team. They can be extremely selective in who they choose. They chose Liggins.

“The thing that’s meaningful to me, that I want people to understand, was we didn’t make this decision blindfolded,” Cavaliers General Manager David Griffin said Thursday. “I understood the depth of the decision. My wife (who also met with Liggins) understood it. And ownership understood it … he’s on a zero tolerance, non-optional policy with us. I think that should be obvious.”

DeAndre Liggins hasn't shied away from his defensive matchups in his new role.

When I mentioned Liggins’ story during Thursday’s Cleveland-Boston game on TNT, a few people protested on my Twitter feed, asking why there was a need to discuss “the past,” and why I couldn’t just let Liggins live his life. But, you can’t gloss over what he did. Domestic violence isn’t about what the perpetrator did; it’s an act that impacts the victim for the rest of their lives. And Liggins certainly believes it’s why he had no NBA offers after being released by the Thunder.

Liggins got in an argument with Horton at his home in Oklahoma City on Aug. 13, 2013. According to a probable cause affidavit, he dragged her out of bed, punched her several times -- most striking her in the back of the head. He left the room, but then returned after Horton had locked the door, punching and kicking her in the head and neck. He allegedly also threw an XBox and box fan at her and hit her in the head.

Liggins and an associate refused to let Horton leave the house twice before she finally fled and went to a neighbor’s home. An examination showed Horton had a separated shoulder, bruising on the back of her head and multiple scrapes on her head and neck. He was charged with two counts of kidnapping, one count of domestic assault and battery with a dangerous weapon, two counts of battery with a dangerous weapon, three counts of domestic abuse in the presence of a minor (Bracyn was in the home at the time) and one count of violating a protective order.

Liggins was never involved in any kind of domestic violence incident before, and he hasn’t been since. But he was involved that night.

“What happened years ago, that wasn’t me,” he said. “It wasn’t what I thought (about him); it’s about what other people thought of me, and what happened. The Ray Rice thing came out like a year later (in February, 2014), and really blackballed me. So my job was to stick with it, believe in God and continue to work on my game and on me as a person.”

Almost all of the charges against Liggins were dropped when Horton opted not to cooperate with authorities in Oklahoma City. The charges were refilled as a single misdemeanor count of domestic abuse.

He signed with Miami’s NBA Development League affiliate, the Sioux Falls Skyforce, and started 34 games, averaging 14.5 points, 7.5 rebounds and 4.9 assists. The Heat then brought him up on a 10-day contract in February, 2014. He only played in one game for the Heat before being released in March of that year. Even though he was named the D-League’s Defensive Player of the Year, and got a camp invite from the Clippers, he didn’t stick there.

Liggins was fortunate to have one of the game’s most respected agents, Henry Thomas of CAA, representing him. Thomas has represented some of the game’s most upstanding people over the years, from Dwyane Wade to Chris Bosh to Michael Finley and Udonis Haslem. Liggins, though, was not a high-profile client. But Thomas didn’t drop him.

“You have to know your guy,” Thomas said Friday. “He was young when that happened. I’ve stuck with him for the whole time. He’s from Chicago. I tend to stick with Chicago guys, because I’m from Chicago. I just thought that he had a chance to make it in the NBA. I thought he was skilled enough to make it. He just needed to be with the right team.”

Liggins signed with BC Red October, a Russian club in Volgograd that plays in the VTB United League along with traditional power CSKA Moscow, to start the 2014-15 season. He left Red October in January of 2015, and finished that season with Eisbaren Bremerhaven of the Basketball Bundesliga in Germany.

After returning from overseas, Liggins went back to Sioux Falls last season. He earned a second Defensive Player of the Year award for the Skyforce, which won the D-League championship last season, and got on Griffin’s radar. The Cavaliers almost signed him last year, but opted to go with veteran Dahntay Jones instead down the stretch and into the playoffs.

“We had a chance to watch him a couple of times last year in the D-League,” Cavs coach Tyronn Lue said. “They played our team, they played Canton a couple of times in the playoffs. So I had a chance to see him play. As a point guard, he played the point guard position, he made a lot of great passes, he saw the floor, didn’t make a lot of mistakes. But to me, what stuck out was his defense, defensively, how he got a lot of deflections, hands on the ball, guarding the best player every single night. And he was willing to take that challenge. That’s what stuck out to me.”

But Griffin needed time to get the full story of what Liggins did in Oklahoma City and if such behavior was part of a pattern in his life. He determined it wasn’t.

“The kid’s a great human being who made a really, really bad decision,” Griffin says.

The Atlanta Hawks made a big push to sign Liggins last summer, and he was very tempted. But Thomas told his client the defending champs were serious about bringing him in, and Griffin was leading the charge. Liggins decided to play for the Cavaliers’ Summer League team. Griffin says Liggins was 30 minutes early for every meeting with him and other team officials in Las Vegas.

Griffin “called me, saying he felt that DeAndre could make their team,” Thomas said. “There were other teams that he could have played with last summer, but I felt that Cleveland was the best shot for him. Just talking to their guy, he convinced me that he could make that team and he could be a contributor. And I believed him.”

But if Liggins was coming back to the NBA, he also had to be vetted by the league. Thomas says he put Liggins in front of league officials over the summer, answering their questions and assuaging their concerns.