Evan Mobley at Media Day. ESPN Cleveland/Rob Lorenzo
Game Night Observations: Finding a way on an off night, Mobley's growth, and role players to the rescue
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Danny Cunningham covers the Cleveland Cavaliers for 850 ESPN Cleveland and TheLandOnDemand.comDETROIT -- Sometimes, shots don’t fall in the NBA. For the Cavaliers on Sunday evening in Detroit, that was the case for much of the evening. The game wasn’t always pretty – in fact it rarely was – but the Cavs found a way to beat the Pistons 102-94 on the road.
The Cavs weren’t a good team on Sunday night. Some nights, even the best teams in the NBA miss shots, and that’s what the short-handed Cavs did against the Pistons. Still finding a way to win a game like that is a sign of a good team.
Make no mistake about it, had things not turned out the way they did, this would have been a bad loss for the Cavs. The Pistons were short-handed and returned from a west coast road trip on Saturday afternoon. Detroit was at a significant disadvantage because of those things, and if the Cavaliers would have made shots at their normal rate, it likely would have resulted in a blowout.
Instead, it was a battle.
“It was like a dogfight out there,” Evan Mobley said. “We kept coming back. We just couldn't get over the hump for the longest. We just stuck with it and then in the fourth quarter we dug deep and finally got the lead and kept it and eventually got the dub.”
In the first half, Darius Garland and Donovan Mitchell combined for 21 points on 7-of-24 shooting. The starting group as a whole – which included Robin Lopez in place of an injured Jarrett Allen – was 13-of-35. Numbers like that aren’t going to win many basketball games.
What the Cavaliers did show on Sunday night, despite the poor shooting display, was a will to find a way and an ability to close out games. On a night when shots aren’t falling, it can tend to be easy for NBA teams to chalk it up as an off night and move on. The Cavs chose not to do that, and the dam finally broke in the fourth quarter.
In the first three quarters, the Cavs shot 40.6% from the floor and were just 3-of-21 from 3-point range. In the fourth quarter, the team shot 53.8% from the floor and made 5-of-7 3-point attempts.
For a team that has struggled mightily at times putting games away, that type of fourth quarter in a game that was tied with seven minutes remaining is a very welcomed sign.
“I think the biggest thing is we didn't play great, and we won,” Mitchell said after the win. “I think that's the biggest takeaway, like we really didn't play great. Now, granted, there are certain things that we can look to and say like, okay, we did this and that but like as a whole, we just didn't play great. And then you come to the fourth and we executed.”
That’s the biggest positive that can be taken away from Sunday night. After so many games that either should have been wins that weren’t or were a little too close for comfort, the Cavs have now put teams away as they should in the last four wins. Even in the double-overtime victory against the Hornets nine days ago that featured an unfathomable meltdown, the team can point to the second overtime victory as a time when something was figured out.
This isn’t a win that the Cavaliers are going to point back to at the end of the season as a night when everything clicked, but it is a win that good teams don’t let turn into a loss.
Mobley's growth
The biggest reason why the Cavaliers were in the game through the first three quarters despite poor offense overall was the play of Evan Mobley.
For much of Sunday night, he was the best player on the floor. Mobley finished the night with 20 points and 13 rebounds for his sixth double-double of the season and fourth in the last six games. He was an efficient 8-of-12 from the floor and knocked down a pair of 3-pointers, matching the total number of 3-pointers all season prior to Sunday. He was the outlier in the starting lineup in terms of efficiency.
Mobley shooting – and making – 3-pointers is a very welcomed sign for the Cavs. Sunday marked the first time he had made a 3-pointer since Oct. 28, and the first time all season that he had made multiple 3-pointers in a game. It’s a skill that the coaching staff is hoping to see more of in the right situations, and it’s something Mobley is growing comfortable with.
“I'm pretty comfortable. Both of those two I felt really good,” Mobley said. “They went down, so it was good to feel that. I'm just going to keep going, keep shooting when I'm open and attack it at the same time so that they have to respect both.”
For the Cavaliers to reach the place they want to go, Mobley’s game is going to have to expand to include that more often. It’s ok that it doesn’t right now, but the offensive ceiling becomes a bit limited compared to what it can be if he can consistently make shots from beyond the arc. The amount of space that it will create – especially when there are two big men on the floor – will do wonders for both Garland and Mitchell.
“It's a game changer,” Cavs head coach J.B. Bickerstaff said of Mobley’s 3-point makes Sunday. “When you have guys who can pressure the paint like we do, especially when Evan's at that five spot, now you're lifting the other team's best rim protector from the paint, it's just gonna create easier opportunities for everybody around him and also for himself, because a lot of times fives don't wanna get out there. So, again, it's one of those things that he works on. He shoots a ton of them in practice, and it's just learning to find his spots there.”
Role players stepping up
The Cavaliers were down four rotation players on Sunday night. Kevin Love remains out with both an illness and a hairline fracture in his right thumb, Lamar Stevens has missed the past two games with a non-COVID illness, Caris LeVert did not play with a sprained ankle, and Allen is out with what the team deemed a low back contusion that occurred on Friday night in Milwaukee.
That significant chunk of the rotation missing paired with off nights from Garland and Mitchell meant that role players needed to step up.
Off the bench, Isaac Okoro was the one that most answered the bell. He played 30 minutes, made both shots he attempted and a pair of free throws. His defense was stellar and while the plus/minus figure can often be misleading, Okoro’s plus-14 felt accurate for what he brought to the floor on Sunday night.
The same can be said of Cedi Osman. Osman so often is the spark off the bench the Cavs need, and Sunday night was just that. He was the only reserve to crack double figures with 10 points on 4-of-8 shooting and was a plsu-12 in 26 minutes.
Lastly, Mamadi Diakite saw his first significant action of the season on Sunday night. The two-way player played 13 minutes in the win, providing energy off the bench. His stat sheet won’t play anyone away – four points on 2-of-3 shooting, two rebounds, two blocks – but he made a legitimate impact on the outcome of the game.
On a night without four of the team’s top eight players, the Cavs don’t win without the effort of Okoro, Osman, and Diakite.
Quick notes- It was an off night for Garland. He finished 4-of-19 from the floor but did finish with 19 points and 10 assists in the win. The thing Garland did best was find his way to the free throw line, where he was 11-of-12.
- “He just had one night,” Bickerstaff said of Garland. “Best thing about the NBA is you play tomorrow, and we play a really good team tomorrow, but you get an opportunity to go out and wash this one away and do it again.”
It was interesting that the Cavaliers started Robin Lopez at center, but he didn’t play following his first shift on the floor. After that, Mobley specifically played the center position for the rest of the night. Finding the dynamic for Mobley to play the power forward alongside someone that isn’t Allen is something the Cavs haven’t figured out. - This season, Mobley and Lope had played 33 minutes together over eight games entering Sunday’s game. The team had been outscored by 5.2 points per 100 possessions in those minutes. For whatever reason, that pairing hasn’t found a groove to date.
- The Cavs have a rematch of their opening night loss tomorrow night in Toronto against the Raptors. Cleveland enters the matchup at 13-7 through the first 20 games of the season, eclipsing the 10-10 mark the team had at this point last year. The Raptors are currently 10-9 and in seventh place in the Eastern Conference.
