Grading Cleveland Cavaliers starters through three games of action

Grading Cleveland Cavaliers starters: Evan Mobley, PF

Evan Mobley has had a shaky start to the NBA season, perhaps still hindered by the ankle injury that kept him out of most of the preseason. He has been somewhat hesitant offensively, averaging just 8.3 field goal attempts per game – fifth on the team, and barely above Darius Garland’s eight attempts in 13 minutes. He is shooting a solid 59.1 percent on 2-pointers when he does take the shot inside.

One reason his shots are down is that his turnovers are way up. He has committed eight in three games, second-most on the team to the ball-dominant Donovan Mitchell. That has included a few turnovers where Mobley tried to create offense by dribbling in the paint and had the ball stripped or knocked away.

Defensively, Mobley has been great. He and Jarrett Allen are locking up the paint, and his ability to rove around and disrupt offense has been used occasionally and to great effect. He is struggling to clear the glass, a weakness from last year that will potentially require more heft from Mobley down the line.

Grade: B

Grading Cleveland Cavaliers starters: Jarrett Allen, C

Finally, there is little to say about Jarrett Allen that would be in any way surprising to those who watched him last season. He is taking a similar amount of shot, pulling in a similar amount of rebounds and tallying a similar handful of assists. His shooting percentage is down just a hair (two more shots go in and it levels out) so he’s averaging 12 and 10 instead of 16 and 11, but the impact Allen has on offense is roughly the same.

It’s the same on defense, where Allen has continued his All-Defense level paint presence into this year. His 1.7 blocks per game pace the team, and he has helped define a defense ranked top-5 in the league in opponent effective field goal percentage. In an environment where so many shots are taken by Mitchell, Garland and Caris LeVert it’s unlikely Allen gets the pure counting stats to be an All-Star, but he’s playing just as well as he was last season.

Grade: A-