The Cleveland Cavaliers made a bold decision last season, a decision that was widely panned until it suddenly began to work. In a league where teams are increasingly downsizing to get more speed and skill on the court, the Cavs trotted out a starting lineup with three seven-footers in it.
Jarrett Allen, Evan Mobley and Lauri Markkanen all started in Game 1 and for most of the season, with Markkanen as a jumbo small forward providing much-needed spacing. This “Tower City” look helped propel the Cavs to a top-5 defense, and when those three shared the court the Cavs had a +7.9 net rating across 621 minutes.
The Cleveland Cavaliers have to consider all options at small forward. Could Evan Mobley be an option at the 3? It’s so crazy it just might work
This summer that group was broken up, with Markkanen headed to the Utah Jazz and Donovan Mitchell joining the Cleveland crew. That means the Cavs have to find another solution at small forward to start alongside their four young stars. Caris LeVert, Isaac Okoro and Dean Wade all have cases to fill that void.
One player that isn’t being talked about much as an option at the 3 is second-year player Evan Mobley. He certainly isn’t a natural small forward, but neither are any of the players in consideration. Terry Pluto floated the idea over on Cleveland.com.
Could that work, either as a starting group or as an option at times in the rotation? When we look a little closer, we find an option that is unorthodox, problematic, intriguing, and ultimately so crazy it just might work.
Could Cavs play Mobley at the 3? Offense
The biggest concern about playing Evan Mobley at small forward is the offense, and specifically the floor-spacing. Mobley’s calling card as a rookie was his defense, which was historically good for a teenage rookie. What was a bit more raw was his offensive game, although he nonetheless averaged 15 points per game.
Mobley’s shooting was very shaky, as he hit only 25 percent of his 1.3 3-point attempts per game last season. That didn’t exactly improve as the season went on, either; after a strong December hitting 35.7 percent of his outside shots, he shot 22.2 percent or worse in each of the next three months before going just 1-of-4 in April to close out the year.
Cleaning the Glass estimates that Mobley played less than 1 percent of his minutes at small forward, and the team scored just 102.3 points per possession in that tiny sample size.
Yet what all of this ignores is that in playing Mobley at the 3, the Cavs would almost certainly by playing Kevin Love at the 4. Suddenly the Cavs are accomplishing exactly what they set out to do last season by starting Lauri Markkanen at the 3. Love provides the spacing that Mobley does not, and honestly that Markkanen did not last season; he is a different level of shooter, by far the best frontcourt shooter on the team.
Put Love and his 39.2 percent from deep on the court and he helps to lift defenders out of the paint. A guard can run pick-and-roll or pick-and-pop with three different bigs, all with different strengths and levels of versatility. It’s still not a group that will be bombing away, but Love’s shooting gives the Cavs a similar net shooting level from last year’s frontcourt.
Could Cavs play Mobley at the 3? Defense
Let’s continue the analysis from there. If the Cavs do play Kevin Love and Evan Mobley as the two forwards, what would their defensive approach be like? Last year the Cavs tried out a number of different looks throughout the regular season, from drop to switching to a hyper-aggressive and effective 3-2 zone with Mobley at the point of attack. Mobley did a little bit of everything, and he did it well.
The difference this year would be that Mobley has to slide up to guard small forwards. Last year Lauri Markkanen stretched himself in taking on those assignments and did an adequate job. Can Mobley do better, or at least well enough to make this alignment work?
Working in Mobley’s favor are his combination of quick feet, smooth hips and significant arm length. He proved more than capable of sliding out to the perimeter and hanging with smaller players; he wasn’t immune to being blown by, but when he was he often stuck with the play and contested, or blocked, from behind.
The Cavs should be able to deploy their 3-2 zone once again, with Kevin Love and Jarrett Allen (or even Robin Lopez) down on either block. He envelops the middle of the court and makes it nearly impossible for teams to run their primary sets.
The difficulty here is that the Cavs will have a weak spot in their frontcourt; Kevin Love is a worse defender than Lauri Markkanen was last year, so even with him at power forward this defense will be stretched more than it was last year. Would a group with Isaac Okoro or Dean Wade at the 3 be better defensively? Probably, but neither player is bringing the offensive firepower that Love is.
Could Cavs play Mobley at the 3? The Best Lineup
We’ve danced around this question thus far, but what is the best lineup to use with Evan Mobley at the 3? The whole idea of moving Mobley up to small forward is to get the team’s best-remaining shooter on the court. Last season that meant starting Lauri Markkanen at the 3, and this time around it would mean playing Kevin Love at the 4.
The best anchor for that group would be Jarrett Allen, which would naturally peg this as a potential starting lineup. Last season J.B. Bickerstaff tended to stagger Mobley and Allen, so to play this group for any length of time would require starting or closing halves with it.
If this group were to start, it would be alongside two defensively-challenged guards in Darius Garland and Donovan Mitchell. That would leave the Cavs open to teams screening for their guards with Kevin Love’s man, attacking the weak spot in the defense, but that also means Allen and Mobley are lurking on the weak side ready to pounce on any rim attacks.
The best lineup to try this out would certainly be the starting group: Darius Garland, Donovan Mitchell, Evan Mobley, Kevin Love and Jarrett Allen. The other option would be to use it as a bench lineup when Darius Garland and Jarrett Allen sit: Mitchell, Caris LeVert/Ricky Rubio, Mobley, Kevin Love and Robin Lopez.
Could Cavs play Mobley at the 3? Should they do it?
Last season it seemed wild that the Cavs would start Lauri Markkanen at the 3, but they did and it worked out, not only seeing success but generating discussions leaguewide about where the league was headed. Starting or playing Mobley at the 3, as a player best deployed at power forward or even center, seems equally crazy; can it be equally successful?
It has the potential to work, but it’s not the best way to structure the starting lineup. The Cavs most need shooting and a player who can defend opposing guards; inserting Kevin Love into the starting lineup and playing Mobley at the 3 adds shooting but not that perimeter defense needed. Isaac Okoro and Dean Wade add defense and the potential for some shooting pop. It’s a reasonable conversation to have, but the starters plus Dean Wade seems like it has a higher floor, and Okoro’s shooting potential is the wild card to a higher ceiling.
Where this lineup does have a lot of merit is as a bench grouping. It would allow Love to be prominently involved but keep his minutes down, and it would be proposing that it’s more valuable to the Cavs’ defensive identity to play Robin Lopez in the rotation at the expense of, say, Cedi Osman or Lamar Stevens. That seems right, at least during the regular season, where the Cavs’ sheer size can overwhelm opponents and propel them up the standings towards home-court advantage in the Eastern Conference playoffs.
What’s the final verdict? The Cavs should not start Kevin Love and put Evan Mobley as the starting small forward, but they should use some bench lineups with Mobley at the 3 to test their effectiveness and maximize their defensive identity in the paint.