Cleveland Cavaliers forward Evan Mobley's first career game-winning basket. ESPN Cleveland/Rob Lorenzo.
Game Night Observations: Mobley's first game-winner, an emotional hangover, and Neto time
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Danny Cunningham covers the Cleveland Cavaliers for 850 ESPN Cleveland and thelandondemand.comThe Cavaliers have had quite a bit of success this season that is can easily be forgotten that they’re still considered to be a young team in the NBA. When that’s combined with this season being the first one with Donovan Mitchell on the roster, there are going to be plenty of things that happen for the first time throughout the course of the year.
Wednesday night was another first, as second-year big man Evan Mobley knocked down his first game-winning shot in his career, lifting the Cleveland Cavaliers to a 90-88 win over the Phoenix Suns at Rocket Mortgage FieldHouse.
It wasn’t a great game by Mobley. For much of the night he struggled offensively, as most players on the floor did. He finished the night with just six points. His 13-foot jumper with four seconds remaining that put the Cavs in front was just his second made field goal of the night.
Even on a night when things weren’t going his way, he still found a way to step up when it mattered the most. While he may not be the player that’s going to put up a gaudy stat line night after night, he will be the type of player that’s going to impact winning on a consistent basis.
“Like he's hit big shots in fourth quarters for us since he got here. He's made big plays for us in the fourth quarter,” Cavs head coach J.B. Bickerstaff said after the game. “He's got the winning gene, and that's why he's impacted winning from day one.”
Mobley has done that time and time again. He’s made big plays when it matters for a Cavs team that has needed him to. He’s improved in almost every aspect of the game from his first year until now, even if it’s not something that’s seen when looking at his scoring numbers.
The type of moment that Mobley had on Wednesday night is one that could help to springboard him to an even higher place, too. There’s no tangible way to state what this could do for his confidence, especially when it comes on a night where he struggled from the floor. Having the belief in himself that he’s going to make the right play repeatedly is what the Cavaliers need him to have. He’s shown he does feature that, and this shot should only reinforce it for him.
“I feel like I wasn’t having the best game and a lot of players on both teams were struggling on the offensive end and it was just one of those games,” Mobley said. “You have to stay consistent. Stick to what you do. I just knocked it down. That’s it.”
It was the type of moment for Mobley that everyone that grew up playing basketball dreamed of. Sure, in most of the daydreams, the final buzzer sounds while the ball is in the air, but the situation is typically pretty similar. Mobley is no different in that aspect. After the game he admitted to being in that place when he was younger, even if it was a little different than what his first actual game-winning shot looked like in the NBA.
“It looked like a 3-pointer for sure,” Mobley said. “But I feel everyone nowadays dreams of a big 3, from deep, a big shot like that. This one happened to be a mid-range jump shot. Just like a drill. One, two, step into it and shoot. Knocked it down.”
Emotional hangover
Other than Mobley’s game-winning jumper, there’s not a ton of great things the Cavaliers are going to have to take away from this win. After Mitchell scored 71 points on Monday night against the Bulls, it seemed as if there was an emotional hangover in the building for much of the game on Wednesday night.
Considering just how historic Monday night’s game was, that’s an understandable result for the Cavs.
Offensively, the Cavs couldn’t figure things out for the entire first half. The team scored just 14 points in the entire first quarter and trailed 43-33 at halftime. They looked like a team that just didn’t have the juice offensively to find a way to win. That all changed in the second half, but it was still an overall poor performance on that end of the floor. The team finished the night with an offensive rating of 94.6, which makes this the worst offensive performance of the season in a victory for the Cavs.
Even on an off night for Mitchell, he found a way to make a big impact late in the game. He knocked down a 3-pointer from the left wing with 40 seconds left in the fourth quarter that gave that Cavaliers an 88-85 lead. He did finish the night with 20 points on 6-of-20 from the floor and 3-of-12 from 3-point range. After playing 50 minutes in his 71-point outburst on Monday, it wasn’t crazy to expect this type of off night from him.
Picking up the slack
Two of the biggest reasons the Cavaliers were able to find a way to win on Wednesday night were Caris LeVert and Raul Neto.
One of those names is ones that Cavs fans expect to see mentioned as a reason for success, and the other one is a surprise.
Let’s start with the surprise.
Neto played 21 minutes for the Cavs on Wednesday night and scored 14 points on 5-of-7 shooting. Those are the most points he’s scored in a Cavs uniform and tied for the most shots he’s taken. There’s only been one other night where he’s played more minutes than Wednesday.
What he gave the Cavaliers in addition to those raw numbers was a much-needed spark off the bench. He injected life into a team that needed it with his hustle and playing style on both ends of the floor.
“I mean he was on both sides of the ball, extremely impactful,” Bickerstaff said. “His ability to pick guys up full court, get deflections, move his feet, keep people in front of him, be disruptive. And then again, there were times where we were struggling offensively where he found a way to get a bucket. So, he was huge for us.”
What makes the impact Neto had more impressive is that he’s a guy that’s frequently in and out of the lineup. He entered Wednesday night playing less than 10 minutes per game and rarely sees the floor when both Mitchell and Darius Garland are in the lineup. His minutes will likely diminish even more when point guard Ricky Rubio returns to game action in the near future.
Even through that, he’s stayed ready for a moment like Wednesday.
“I've been in this league for eight years and I've been every position you can imagine,” Neto said. “I've been starting, and backup point guard, third, fourth point guard and you gotta find times where you need to work your game, you need to work on your body, make sure you stay ready physically, make sure you stay ready mentally, you know.”
LeVert is much more of a mainstay on the floor for the Cavs, but he’s someone who hasn’t been the team’s most consistent player. He had one of his better games in a Cavs uniform on Wednesday night, scoring a team-high 21 points on 7-of-11 from the floor (5-of-7 from 3-point range) with 12 of his points coming in the fourth quarter.
On a night with Garland out due to a thumb injury, the Cavs needed LeVert to have a game like this. The next step is figuring how to make it more of a consistent thing.
“Well, I mean, that's why we made the initial deal to get Caris here,” Bickerstaff said. “The more important that games are, the longer your season is, you need guys who can play one-on-one basketball and create their own and get it going. And Caris has the ability to do that. And in ugly games like tonight was, you're going to need guys who can just beat their man. They do a lot of switching, trying to keep you in front of them, so you need somebody who can create on their own. And Caris can do that at a high level.”
