This offseason, Cleveland spent championship-level money on its core four players. The Cavaliers extended Donovan Mitchell with a three-year, $150.3 million max contract, Evan Mobley with a five-year, $224.2 million max contract, and Jarrett Allen with a three-year, $90.7 million deal. All that on top of the five-year, $197.2 million extension Cleveland gave Darius Garland a year ago.
That’s a massive bet on a core that has won 51 and 48 games the last two seasons, finishing with the four seed both years and advancing out of the first round once. Are the Cavaliers better than that? Mitchell thinks they are and told Marc Spears of ESPN’s Andscape about it.
“We’re championship contenders when we’re healthy. I feel like last year we grew in a lot of ways. We played a lot of different ways. Now during that stretch, we went on, obviously D.G. [Darius Garland] and Evan [Mobley] were hurt. But we found something that really can help bring us to the next level. So now the trick is how do we continue to implement that style of play over 82 [regular-season games] and then the final 16 [playoff] wins. But the development is part of the reasons I decided to sign because I believe in our development. I believe in the hunger and the will that we have as a group.
“And so, for us, I believe we’re cherished contenders when healthy. But at the end of the day, I can tell you this, we got to go out there and continue to prove it on a daily basis. We haven’t done anything.”
That is precisely what a franchise should want its best player to say — Mitchell talks about loving the city and wanting to win there in this interview. Cavaliers fans should be ecstatic.
For Mitchell to be right, for Cleveland to be a contender and a threat to Boston — or at least on par with Philadelphia, New York and, maybe, Milwaukee — a few things have to go right. Mitchell hit on the first one, they have to stay healthy. That’s true for every team in the league, but the Cavaliers haven’t in recent years, and it has become harder to trust that they will.
Second, and the most critical one: Evan Mobley has to step up his offensive game and become an All-Star level player. Mobley, the 6’11” big out of USC, is already a high-level defender — he was all defense in 2023 and would have been again last season if he was healthy and played enough games (see previous paragraph) — but he’s pedestrian on offense. His game has not grown as projected on that end.
Last season Mobley averaged 15.7 points a game and shot an improved 37.3% from 3 — but on just 1.2 attempts a game. The Cavaliers floor spacing falls apart when he is on the court because teams don’t fear him to take and make 3s, so when he is paired with another non-shooting big in Allen opposing teams pack the paint and take away driving lanes for Mitchell and Garland. The numbers make it clear: Last season the Cavaliers were seven points per 100 possessions better when just Allen was on the court than when it was Allen and Mobley. That’s because when Mobley was in street clothes a floor-spacing four was next to Allen and everything fit better.
Which brings us to the third thing: new coach Kenny Atkinson has to fix the spacing and fit issues in Cleveland, and with that jumpstart an offense that was 18th in the league last season. Atkinson comes with a history of strong player development, which we saw when he coached a rebuilding Brooklyn squad, plus he spent the past few years at the right hand of Steve Kerr and working with the Warriors’ motion offense.
Atkinson’s challenge is it hasn’t looked like the pieces fit. Mitchell and Garland each need the ball in their hands to be most effective and seem to take turns, playing next to each other not with each other. Then there is the non-shooting combo of Allen and Mobley.
When most front offices would have pivoted, Cleveland has bet that Atkinson can solve these problems, that Mobley can take a step forward as a shooter on offense,and that the Cavaliers can finally stay healthy. If all that happens things get even more interesting at the top of the East. If not, the trade rumors will start swirling again in the city by the lake.
