The Cleveland Cavaliers have had a strong start to the season, sitting on a 2-1 record whose only blemish is a three-point loss in Toronto. They have the best point differential in the Eastern Conference with a top-5 offense and defense. They’ve looked every bit the part of a playoff team.
Part of that success has come from their bench. Cedi Osman has been lights out to start the year, shooting 57.1 percent of his 3-pointers. Robin Lopez has lived up to his “Captain Hook” moniker, scooping shots in on offense, and was a steadying addition to the rotation after the first game to provide extra rim protection.
The Cleveland Cavaliers are off to a strong start in the 2022-23 NBA season. How should all 5 of the starters be graded through three games?
The Cavs will ultimately rise and fall, however, on the strength of their starting lineup. It’s a group that was shaken up right from the jump when Darius Garland sustained a cut on his eyelid in the second quarter of Game 1, and Isaac Okoro has been his replacement for a group even more helio-centric around Donovan Mitchell than the offense was last season around Garland.
Let’s take a look at the five players who have started the past two games: Donovan Mitchell, Isaac Okoro, Caris LeVert, Evan Mobley, Jarrett Allen. How have each of these players performed through three games this season? We’ll start with the backcourt, which features one phenomenal performer and one leaving a lot on the table.
Grading Cleveland Cavaliers starters: Donovan Mitchell, PG
In the absence of Darius Garland it has been Donovan Mitchell starting at point guard, and he has been absolutely sublime. He dropped 100 points in three games, a franchise record for the first three games of a season. He also became only the third player in NBA history to score 30 or more points in his first three games with a team. He can’t be stopped.
Hardly just a scorer, Mitchell has been chipping in from every angle. He is averaging career-high numbers in rebounds, assists, steals and 3-pointers. The Cavs have the league’s fifth-ranked offense, and with Garland out and Evan Mobley scuffling to start the year (more on him shortly) it’s being driven almost entirely by Mitchell. Yet the concerns with Mitchell, namely his defensive issues, have been minimized by his effort and intensity, and in the Cavs’ win over the Washington Wizards he earned the team’s “Junkyard Dog” chain for defensive effort.
The only thing holding Mitchell back are the turnovers. He has already committed 13 turnovers, tied for tenth in the league, including losing the ball twice in the final minute against the Wizards and forcing an overtime period, which the Cavs dominated.
Grade: A
Grading Cleveland Cavaliers starters: Isaac Okoro, SG
The Cavs seemed to have a legitimate decision on their hands coming out of the preseason. They clearly valued the playmaking and talent of Caris LeVert as the team’s fifth starter, but Isaac Okoro played so well in the team’s final two preseason games that many thought he would earn the nod. He didn’t in the first game, but the injury to Garland made a spot for him to step back in as a starter and get another chance to prove himself.
That chance appears to have been squandered, as Okoro has displayed all of his flaws and few of his strengths over the past few games. He has taken only 10 shots and made just two of them, going 0-for-5 from 3-point range, for a paltry four points in three games. It’s not clear what is more discouraging for Okoro: that he twice played more than 20 minutes and scored just two points, or that before this year he did the same twelve other times. Okoro isn’t bringing much in other areas, either, with just three rebounds and 0 assists.
Okoro is a good, perhaps great defender of guards and small wings, but without the size to defend larger forwards he has to be able to bring shooting to the table to be playable. Last year he increased his percentage but that came on some of the easiest looks in the entire NBA. He might still get those looks playing alongside Garland and Donovan Mitchell this year, but he has to increase his shot volume and percentage to have a chance at sticking around, in the starting lineup or even on the Cavaliers at all.
Grade: D
Grading Cleveland Cavaliers starters: Caris LeVert, SF
Caris LeVert got the nod to start at small forward, a controversial decision that seemed to ignore that his skills are incredibly redundant with the other starters. Similarly to a much more dysfunctional team on the West Coast, the Cavs seemed to flirt with the idea of bringing LeVert off of the bench before entrenching him as the starter when the regular season began.
LeVert’s redundant play style became a benefit rather than a drawback when Darius Garland went down, and LeVert has played heavy minutes in his absence, averaging 34.7 minutes per game. The good includes his playmaking, as LeVert has shown early chemistry with the team’s bigs and is averaging 6.3 assists per game, by far a career-high. His outside shot is also falling, with LeVert shooting 7-for-14 in the early going.
The bad? Well, it’s the intersection of his inefficiency inside the arc and his love of dribbling the basketball. LeVert is shooting only 15.8 percent from 2-point range, last in the NBA among all 172 players who have taken at least 15 2-point shots this season. He has often seemed to take on himself the task of creating offense and fought his way into the paint only to be surrounded by defenders who harry him into a poor shot.
LeVert’s defense has been fine, and he won’t shoot 15.8 percent on 2-pointers all season, but if he can’t settle into the offense in a way that elevates the team and decreases his personal time of possession, it will be a long and frustrating season for both sides.
Grade: C
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-