DETROIT — Trading Darius Garland for James Harden was as much a bet on this current group as it was on Harden. Specifically, it was a gamble on Evan Mobley being good enough to handle postseason pressure right now, not in three or four years.
In Game 5, he showed that he was ready for the challenge.
Mobley dominated the paint in the Cleveland Cavaliers’ Game 5 victory over the Detroit Pistons, but they made him earn it. The new cut he sported near his left eye afterward was proof of that.
Defense has
been Mobley’s calling card since he came into the league. That proved accurate again as he continually deterred shots at the rim down the stretch and overtime, while also outplaying opposing All-Star center Jalen Duren to the point that Pistons’ head coach J.B. Bickerstaff decided to close with Paul Reed instead.
Offensively, Mobley’s seven points to close the fourth quarter will get the headlines. He hit a clutch triple and two free throws to tie the game in regulation. Both are areas he’s struggled with throughout the regular season.
More than that, his decision-making was what kept the Cavs’ offense afloat on a night Detroit was selling out to stop Donovan Mitchell and Harden.
Bickerstaff has had an up-close look at the best and worst versions of Cleveland’s core group. He knows from first-hand experience how the Cavs’ offense can bog down when you trap the guards and force the bigs to beat you in the short roll. After all, that’s the strategy the New York Knicks used against him back in 2023.
Back then, Mobley wasn’t ready for the moment. He was simultaneously sped up to the point he wasn’t making the right decisions, but also wasn’t moving quickly enough to capitalize on the mismatch blitzing the ball handler brings. This led to an underwhelming playoff debut.
Three playoff runs later has proven to be a different story.
Bickerstaff deployed the same strategy that Tom Thibodeau used against his group three years earlier, but it didn’t work this time.
In Game 5, Mobley continually made the right play whenever he was asked to create in the short roll by reading the defense and correctly getting the ball to where the help defense was coming from.
There was a decisiveness with Mobley’s rolls that made him difficult to guard. He attacked the rim with a purpose, but also kept his eyes up to see what the defense was presenting him. When the backline defender stepped up, he found Jarrett Allen three times for easy baskets around the rim.
If the help defense came from the corners, Mobley made the pass out to the shooters who were there.
This evolution is where head coach Kenny Atkinson has seen Mobley make strides this season.
“That’s been a big part of his development piece,” Atkinson said of Mobley’s playmaking. “Getting him to make the right reads, helping him make the right rights. I think he’s getting better at it.”
This season has been a journey for Mobley as a playmaker. The Cavs started the year trying to run the offense through him. That experiment didn’t go well, as he often got stuck dribbling the ball too much below the free-throw line and wasn’t able to adjust when the help defense came.
The coaching staff responded by scaling his usage back after a short experiment. Even though the results didn’t pay off right away, you’re seeing the fruits of going through that struggle now.
“You rewind to the beginning of the year, it was probably more head down scoring and maybe not finding that balance,” Atkinson said. “Some of that was intentional, but I think he’s gotten to a nice equilibrium where he’s aggressive to score, but can read the geography of the court. [He] can read the swarms. We call them swarms. They swarm, and you’ve got to find windows.”
Mobley was continuously finding the windows to the point of picking up a team-high eight assists in the win.
Making the right read also requires you to call your own number when the situation calls for it. When the Pistons’ defenders stayed home and forced Mobley to beat them as a shooter, he confidently took those shots by canning two crucial triples when the “swarms” went away from him.
Mobley is one of the most difficult players to judge.
On one hand, the flaws in his game — self-creation, dribbling, lack of strength — are obvious and can be frustrating to watch. On the other hand, what makes him elite are the more underappreciated skills that he’s mastered so well, such as defense, finishing well at the rim, and being a good secondary playmaker. Mobley is considerably better than the loudest detractors would lead you to believe, but also not as skilled as you’d like from a number one franchise player — at least not yet. However, that doesn’t mean you can’t win with him if he’s in the right context, as the Cavs are showing right now.
The Cavs have been in a weird spot as a team. They’ve tried to thread the needle between winning now and having the longest runway possible. That’s how you’ve gotten a two-timeline approach between Mobley (24-years-old) and Mitchell (29). Moving a 26-year-old, two-time All-Star for a point guard a decade his senior committed them to one path. This team is trying to win now in a two to three-year window.
For that to happen, Mobley needs to play like an All-NBA caliber player in the postseason. When he has, as was the case in Game 5, the Cavs look like a team that very well could come out of the Eastern Conference.
Reps like the ones Mobley got in Detroit, where he’s consistently making the right play and coming up big in the crunch, is only going to help him when he’s called upon to do so again.
“Just boost his confidence to another level,” Harden said about Mobley’s performance. “He’s versatile, he can protect the rim, he can generate steals, he can do a little bit of everything defensively and offensively. … With an opportunity to present yourself, he’s available. Tonight, he came up big for us.”
