Photo via Cavs.
You must have an active subscription to read this story.
Click Here to subscribe Now!
The Cavaliers haven’t been whole since the second quarter on opening night when Darius Garland went down with a left eye laceration. Even if Garland’s absence, it’s felt as if more than just he was missing from the team on the offensive end of the floor.
It didn’t feel that way on Wednesday night in Cleveland’s 103-92 win over the Orlando Magic at Rocket Mortgage FieldHouse.
For the first time during this young season, Evan Mobley came alive offensively in a way he was expected to from the start of the season. Whether the reason was his ankle, lack of chemistry with Donovan Mitchell, or something else, what the Cavs had been getting from Mobley in terms of offensive output simply wasn’t enough.
On Wednesday night, there was no question that it was. Mobley finished the game with 20 points on 9-of-15 shooting. All of those numbers are season-highs for the second-year big man.
On a night when Garland was still missing with the eye laceration and Mitchell only provided 14 points on an off night from the floor, the Cavs needed Mobley to be the guy they think he will be. Against the Magic, he was.
Mobley went into the locker room at halftime having only attempted three shots and scoring five points in 13 minutes.
In the third quarter alone, Mobley scored eight of Cleveland’s 19 points and attempted six shots. The Cavs looked at times as if the ball was being force fed to Mobley, but after three and a half games of passiveness offensively, it’s what was needed to help get Mobley going on that end of the floor.
“He was determined to help us win this game,” Cavs head coach J.B. Bickerstaff said following the win. “We know what he's capable of. We believe in him a lot. And he was attack-minded and he went out to prove a point. I think he did that.”
To be fair, it’s not as if Mobley had been playing poorly, and there certainly was no reason to press any sort of panic button surrounding his offensive game. It was also fair to question why he wasn’t contributing more on that end of the floor. Finding his rhythm is something that just hadn’t happened to this point in the season.
The reasoning as to why could be a combination of different things. Playing with Mitchell – after not playing together during the preseason – likely contributes to it as much as playing without Garland, whom Mobley already has built in chemistry with. Mobley having to work himself back into game shape after not being able to move around as much while dealing with that ankle sprain likely contributed too.
“I found my rhythm in the second half. I just really feel like was going to get the ball whenever it got stagnant. That's what we've been really working on,” Mobley said. “Second half, I really got to it. First half, I just gotta put the whole entire game together.”
Fired up halftime
The Cavs didn’t play all that well on Wednesday night in the win, especially in the first half of the game. It was a sloppy basketball game that saw the Cavaliers fumbling rebounds out of bounds, missing shots at the rim, and allowing a less-talented Orlando Magic team to stick around. In a game in which the Cavaliers could have been up by double figures, the team led by just two points at the break.
That prompted a fiery speech by Bickerstaff at halftime.
“I can’t repeat it, my mom will wash my mouth out with soap,” Bickerstaff said of what happened at halftime.
This came after All-Star center Jarrett Allen said in his walk off interview with Serena Winters that the team was cussed out at halftime.
“We deserved it,” Allen told the media after the game. “All I’ll say is you see how animated J.B. is during the game, just multiply that for three. That’s all I’m going to say. It got us going.”
The Cavaliers didn’t come out to start the second half playing all that well offensively, but they did turn things up a notch on the defensive end of the floor as they held the Magic to just 19 points.
Even if they didn’t play with great efficiency offensively, things did feel different. Aside from Mobley’s discussed assertiveness, there was more of a swagger surrounding Allen. A little past the midway point of the third quarter he threw down a ferocious dunk on Orlando’s Bol Bol that not only seemed to energize him, but the entire building.
Jarrett Allen on Bol Bol's head😤 pic.twitter.com/gUe5OoFAY6
— SportsCenter (@SportsCenter) October 27, 2022
That type of fire shouldn’t be something that Bickerstaff needs to bring out every night, nor will he. But on a Wednesday night early in the season against a winless team, it made sense that the Cavaliers maybe didn’t have their best stuff from the beginning of the game. It made more sense for Bickerstaff to do something about it in the manner in which he did.
“He kinda lit us up at halftime. He was really just trying to get us to play our brand of basketball, Cavaliers basketball. He felt like weren't really doing that, and he's definitely right,” Mobley said. “In the second half we just tried to do what he said and really pick it up and that's what we did.”
Backcourt playmaking
The game was an off night for both Mitchell and Caris LeVert in terms of shooting. The starting backcourt combined to go just 8-of-31 from the floor. It was by far the lowest output the Cavaliers have had from their backcourt to date, but it wasn’t as simple as those guys weren’t making shots.
They were still able to help in other ways, primarily putting others in positions to be successful. Mitchell finished the night with eight assists while LeVert had six. For that to come on a night in which the team as a whole only shot 41.4 percent from the floor, it’s an impressive assist output. Both Mitchell and LeVert distributed the ball well enough to finish with over 10 assists, and on future nights they both possibly could.
There were a couple of passes that Caris LeVert threw tonight that were really impressive. I don't think the angle on TV does it justice. This one to Kevin Love was a beauty. pic.twitter.com/ljytakRNEl
— Danny Cunningham (@RealDCunningham) October 27, 2022
Having both Mitchell and LeVert showing the ability to pass like this only makes things even more interesting for the offense when Garland eventually returns to the floor.