Mile High struggles: 1 stud and 1 dud for Cavs in loss to Denver

Cavs dud: Evan Mobley

Evan Mobley has certainly learned all about the sophomore slump. He has struggled at times immensely this season, especially when it comes to offense and his shots. He only scored 12 points last night and has really of late struggled. He’s averaging 14.2 per game on the season but in the last 10 games he’s played in, he’s only gone over that mark twice. The days of Mobley contributing 15-to-20 points on a nightly basis as he was doing at the beginning of the season more often have been few and far between right now.

The other frightening stat from last nights game against the Nuggets was that he went zero-for-six from the free throw line. He’s played basketball for a long time and as a former coach writing this article I could never emphasize enough of players understanding that they were leaving free points from the charity stripe by not making their free throws. Mobley needs to get back to having some more confidence on the offensive side of things, as his defense continues to be a strong suit and relied upon by the team.

It hasn’t helped either over the last few weeks that his teammate, Jarrett Allen, has also struggled at times while both are important to the Cavaliers defense moving forward. They both need to step up their game offensively.

The Cavs are currently one of the better defensive teams in the league despite the slightest loss, and they rank number two overall while giving up 109 points per game. They are just below the Memphis Grizzlies, but just above the Milwaukee Bucks as far as those defensive points. One statistic that stands out defensively where Cleveland struggles is in blocks per game, as an aside.

One would think that with Evan Mobley and Jarrett Allen in the paint that they would be contributing more than 4.1 blocks a game; that ranks them 25th in the league in shot blocks. The Brooklyn Nets lead the league with a 6.9 blocks per game average.

All the Cavs are hanging their hats on their defense and players like Mobley in the paint have got to figure out how to get off to better starts in most games and get better contributions from Mobley and Allen on offense, because right now they’re relying too much on the guard play of Darius Garland and Donovan Mitchell.

As mentioned earlier, Dean Wade, and also Ricky Rubio should be returning very soon likely on this Western road trip, and that should help the team moving forward.