Game Night Observations: A complete performance, Mitchell's numbers, and Okoro's continued improvement
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Danny Cunningham covers the Cleveland Cavaliers for 850 ESPN Cleveland and thelandondemand.comThe Cleveland Cavaliers put forth one of their best performances on the road this season in Sunday’s 122-103 win over the Indiana Pacers.
All season long, it’s been a challenge for the Cavs to put together everything on the court away from Rocket Mortgage FieldHouse. Sunday night was a night when the team was in control for almost the entire 48 minutes.
Yes, the Pacers aren’t a great team, but they are much better when All-Star guard Tyrese Haliburton is on the floor than when he missed time with an elbow injury. He played on Sunday against the Cavs, and it didn’t matter much. Cleveland led the game for nearly 38 of the 48 minutes thanks to stellar play from most of the starting lineup and a big help off the bench in the form of Ricky Rubio.
Darius Garland played like an All-Star, again, despite not being named to the team. He finished with 24 points on a very efficient 8-of-13 from the floor and 4-of-6 from beyond the arc and handed out six assists. The control he has over the game is really impressive and it’s becoming evident how confident of a player he is.
Both big men, Jarrett Allen and Evan Mobley, were really good on both ends of the floor. Allen finished with 18 points and 13 rebounds while Mobley had 17 points and 10 rebounds while also blocking three shots and coming up with a steal.
Mobley is continuing to make plays – like the one above – that give reason to believe his offensive ceiling is still as high as many thought it would be. Just because he hasn’t been able to figure out his shot from long range doesn’t mean he hasn’t been good on that end of the floor. He’s continuing to be more aggressive with the basketball in his hands and has developed a very reliable hook shot that is unquestionably his go-to move when he has the ball on the block. The other stuff will continue to come, but lately he’s been awesome on both ends.
Sunday night was just the fourth time in franchise history that all five starters for the Cavs scored at least 17 points in a game and the first time since March 10, 2015. It was a really balanced attack for the Cavs which made the win all the more impressive.
What to make of Mitchell
Donovan Mitchell finished the game with 19 points, but there are continuing signs that things aren’t completely right with him. He’s played in five games since injuring his groin on Jan. 16 at home against the Pelicans. In those five games he’s averaged 15.2 points per game while shooting just 35.4 percent from the floor and 31.8 percent from 3-point range.
Stats aren’t necessarily needed to know that he hasn’t been himself, but they certainly help to tell the story. The one that stands out the most is that he’s attempted just seven free throws in those five games. Five of those came on Sunday night, with three of them coming when he was fouled shooting a 3-pointer. In other words, Mitchell has drawn four free throws attacking the basket in the last five games.
These stats are very stark differences to what Mitchell was doing prior to the injury when he was averaging 28.4 points per game on 48.4%/39.5%/86.9% splits in the first 40 games of the season. At some point, Mitchell will return to his form from before the injury and the Cavaliers will be better for it.
Isaac Okoro continues to improve
Okoro was under a lot of external scrutiny earlier in the season. He started off the season by missing his first 12 3-pointers and seeing his minutes significantly reduced. Things never got quite to the point where Okoro wasn’t playing, but it was to the point where many of his minutes were going to Lamar Stevens instead.
Defensively, Okoro was still an above-average player, but on the offensive end opponents were treating the Cavs like there were only four players on the floor at times.
On Sunday night in Indianapolis, Okoro hit three of the four 3-pointers he attempted and finished with a season-high 20 points. He can’t be counted on to put in that type of performance on a nightly basis on the offensive end of the floor. That’s not his role and it unlikely ever will be. But when he does play like that the Cavaliers are incredibly difficult to beat. When Okoro scores 10 points or more in a game, the Cavs are 10-4 this season after Sunday. Of those 14 games in which Okoro has reached double figures, 12 of them have come since the start of December.
Since the calendar flipped to December, Okoro has really taken off as a useful player offensively. He’s played 33 games since then and has shot 41.2 percent from beyond the 3-point arc while even taking things up to another level on the defensive end as well. The Cavs may still need to upgrade that position if they want to be taken seriously as a contender in the Eastern Conference, but at this point there may not be a player they could conceivably trade for on the wing that represents that much of an upgrade over Okoro.
Okoro has gone from being nearly unplayable to being a guy that genuinely helps the Cavaliers win on both ends of the floor in the span of a couple of months. If he continues this trajectory the Cavs will have one of the best starting lineups in all of basketball by the end of the season.
