As the Cleveland Cavaliers‘ 2022 preseason has ended, the regular season is right around the corner. This season has a lot of Cavs fans excited, as this team, on paper, looks to be one of the most talented in recent years. They are set to have 3 All-Stars from last season (Darius Garland, Donovan Mitchell, and Jarrett Allen), and a player that many believe will be an All-Star sooner rather than later (Evan Mobley), and all of them are 26 years old or younger.
Nonetheless, the Cavaliers lost 3 out of their 4 preseason games. This shouldn’t be causing any alarms to sound off, as usually in preseason games, many teams don’t play their best players as much as they usually would in the regular season.
For example, Donovan Mitchell only played 26.9 minutes per night, and didn’t even play the last preseason game in a loss at the Orlando Magic this past Friday. Also, Evan Mobley only played 1 game because of a minor ankle injury he got before the preseason even started. And in his only game at Orlando, he played 16 minutes in total.
Anyway, there were some Cavaliers who seemed to have a great preseason, while others seemed to have struggled a bit. Like I mentioned earlier, this was only preseason action, so I don’t expect this to be everyone’s exact level of play as all 82 regular season games.
With all of that aside, let’s look at some metaphorical winners and losers of Cleveland’s preseason, examining two on each side of the coin, in particular.