Cavaliers fans needn’t worry about Evan Mobley’s offensive start

Ahead of his second NBA season, there was a boatload of hype surrounding Cleveland Cavaliers talented young big Evan Mobley. There still is going to be that involving him looking onward, with how successful Mobley’s rookie campaign was, and with his multi-faceted skill set.

Mobley finished a close second in the voting for the league’s Rookie of the Year Award, with Scottie Barnes of the Toronto Raptors winning that. Mobley lost by the closest margin since the 2002-03 season, though, and over what was a full offseason, he was able to work on fine-tuning his offensive game.

Mobley reportedly worked extensively on his three-point shooting, along with his shot creation and seemingly in leveling up on-ball. Mobley’s first season, overall, was a terrific start to his career, as evidenced by him having 15.0 points, 8.3 rebounds, 2.5 assists and 1.7 blocks per contest.

Nonetheless, there were some inconsistencies on offense for him, such as with his three-point shooting, and it was apparent that he did some have issues getting to the rim via self creation at times. Still, Mobley’s first season was a very promising one, and his defense was exceptional for a young player, let alone a player in his first NBA season.

Even with those things ringing true, to begin his second year, he has looked a bit out of sorts on offense. Through Mobley’s first three games of 2022-23, his production was down somewhat, at 13.3 points per game, and he had only 8.3 shot attempts per outing.

Now, with Donovan Mitchell in the fold, there was inevitably going to be an adjustment period for Mobley in finding his looks in Cleveland’s set offense, regardless of Darius Garland’s absence because of an eye injury since the opener at Toronto. Mobley also didn’t have preseason reps with Mitchell due to Mobley’s ankle sprain prior to the first preseason contest, which led to him missing the first three of the Cavs’ exhibition contests; he touched on that dynamic with Mitchell recently, via Chris Fedor of Cleveland.com.

"‘It’s been a different change on the court,” Mobley said. “Didn’t get any preseason games (with Mitchell). These are my first few games with him. But we’re winning, so it’s going pretty well.”‘"

Mobley’s since been fine, in relation to the prior injury ailment, and he hasn’t appeared to be limited in games since he’s been back. Granted, he’s been a bit out of sorts for stretches, and as we mentioned, in the first few games, he didn’t get the ball in his go-to spots nearly as much as the team would’ve liked.

That said, we shouldn’t be worried about Mobley’s offensive output thus far, based on how he still has been able to help the Cavaliers, and with his IQ, he’ll find ways to get rolling more.

Cavaliers fans needn’t worry about Mobley’s offensive production being down a bit early on.

To reiterate, Mobley is still a young player, and is just beginning his second season. The offseason move for Mitchell was inherently going to lead to an adjustment period for the team overall, too, and despite Garland’s absence, there’s still been some feeling-out with Mitchell in the fold still for Cleveland.

Mitchell has gotten his as a scorer, as evidenced by his historic first three contests, and that wasn’t necessarily surprising. But, his playmaking has been huge for other Cavaliers as well, and as the season progresses, I’m sure his chemistry with Mobley will continually improve. There have been some positive signs still, whether or not the looks have gone down for Evan.

Mobley had a solid performance at Chicago in that convincing W, with 16 points on seven-of-nine shooting in 25 minutes, and in a win over the Orlando Magic, thanks to a strong second half from the Cavs, Mobley had 20 points. In that one, he seemed to be more of a focal point in that second half as well with 17 points then, and ended up converting nine of his 15 shot attempts overall (an early-season high), to go with three rebounds and three assists.

Now, Mobley did have three turnovers, and had some foul trouble earlier on, however, he cleared things up as the game wore on, and eventually settled in, leading to him helping spur on the team to take control. Jarrett Allen (18 points), Cedi Osman (14 points off the bench) and Dean Wade (12 points, all from three), with Wade getting a start there then at the 3, also all had their share of production versus the Magic, for what it’s worth.

Not discounting those players’ contributions, it was encouraging to see Mobley be more assertive it seemed, and from here, I do believe we’ll see him much more settled in game-to-game. He was getting inside and making quality cuts versus Orlando, which was nice to see.

If and when he gets mismatches, I do believe we’ll see the Cavs find him more consistently, and I’d expect to see him get to hooks more frequently, and off that, he should be able to get his own counters in the mid-post. And I’d imagine eventually, he should have more catch-and-shoot looks falling from deep, particularly when Garland is back in more of a rhythm coming off his injury.

Overall, though, Cavs fans shouldn’t be worried about Mobley. He’ll be just fine, and I do firmly believe the Year 2 offensive leap is definitely going to happen for him.