The Cavs Core Four: Evaluating their performance in Game 1 vs. Knicks

Evan Mobley’s Game 1

As always, there are no complaints about Mobley’s defensive impact. He did a masterful job on Julius Randle, as he was a huge part in holding Randle to 19 points on 7-of-20 shooting. He was also great on the glass, hauling in 11 big rebounds, and even though he missed a box out in the closing moments of Game 1, Mobley had an otherwise solid game. However, offensively he was not as strong, to say the least.

Mobley only shot 4-of-13 from the field, including a porous 3-of-11 in the paint. This is way down from his numbers during the regular season, where he shot 55% from the field. At times, he was struggling with the strength of Randle and Mitchell Robinson, on both ends of the court. While the offensive evolution of Mobley over the past three months has been very encouraging, he has to step up his level of physicality in the paint if the Cavaliers want to be successful.

It was the youngster’s first playoff game, so take his performance with a grain of salt, but he needs to be better nonetheless.

Jarrett Allen’s Game 1

While Allen had a few rough moments in Game 1, he had a solid overall performance. He finished with 14 points and 14 rebounds on 6-of-8 shooting and provided great impact on both ends of the floor.

On offense, he was great at diving to the rim and setting great screens. I was also very impressed at how patient he was in the paint, using shot fakes to get the bigs jumping in the air and then going for the dunk. He finished strong every time at the rim. He also had a very clutch tip-in to put the Cavs up one with 2:18 left in the fourth quarter. Allen provided great energy as always, and his play picked up as the game went on.

Coming into the series, the talk was all about Mitchell Robinson’s prowess on the glass, and Allen outrebounded him 14-8.

I do not expect this to be the case very game, but if Allen can continue to win most of the battles with Robinson, the Cavaliers will be in a good spot.