Tomorrow night, the Cleveland Cavaliers will have hit the 20 game mark of the NBA schedule, about a quarter of the way through. Hard to believe right?
The team has had to deal with a lot of injuries. No Cavalier player has appeared in all 19 games to date. Evan Mobley has played in 18, Donovan Mitchell in 17, and next up is De’Andre Hunter with 15.
Max Strus has been out all season, while Darius Garland has seen action five times.
Pretty amazing considering they’ve only played 19 contests.
This has led to a lot of experimenting from Kenny Atkinson, so we really don’t have a true reading on what this team can be in 2025-26.
On the plus side, some players who probably wouldn’t have seen the court this season have emerged as possible rotation players for this team as the season progresses.
Most notably, we are talking about Nae’Qwan Tomlin, who Atkinson said the other night is a guy he has a hard time taking him off the floor. The 25-year-old is averaging 7.1 points and 2.8 rebounds, 1.5 on the offensive end and at 6’8″, has played at guard and both forward spots.
When everyone gets healthy, we would like to see Tomlin replace Dean Wade in the rotation to see if the rookie can continue to produce like this once word gets around the league. If he doesn’t, we think you can always go back to Wade and he will be, well Dean Wade.
Craig Porter Jr. has done well too, and although we would like to see a better handle from Porter, the one thing he can do is create his own short, which is in short supply with the Cavs.
Porter is scoring at 5.8 per game, getting 2.9 boards and 2.5 assists per contest with 44.8% shooting from the three-point line. He should also keep getting time when the roster is whole.
And second year player Jaylon Tyson has earned his spot, mostly by being a defensive force, and unlike Isaac Okoro, has to be respected by the opposition when it comes to his shot. He’s scoring 11.3 points and 4.6 rebounds per game and is in the top ten in the league in shooting from three.
Conversely, Atkinson and the staff have to figure out why Mobley seems to be in a funk. Right now, he seems very passive when on the court. It could be because of using him differently offensively. He seems to be on the perimeter more often this year, rather than be at the elbow where he can attack the basket easier and also be a distributor.
However, we have concerns about Mobley’s aggressive nature. One comparison for him when he came into the league was Kevin Garnett, but their personalities seem so different, and frankly the Cavs could use Mobley to have more of Garnett’s mindset.
But can someone develop having that? Mobley looks to be a pretty quiet guy, can he adopt an alpha mindset? It’s one thing to have size, something we have advocated for, and certainly the team is bigger.
It still seems to lack toughness, particularly from the bigger players. We have no qualms about Mitchell’s will to win, but it would be great if one of the bigs adopted a “take no crap” philosophy.
That’s a real concern, particularly as the playoffs get nearer. That’s still the biggest question from our perspective.
Cleveland Sports Perspective 