The Cleveland Cavaliers have not had the start to the 2023-24 season that they would have hoped, going 2-3 and losing all three of their home games. It’s hard to pin much blame on the team, however, when Cleveland has been down its entire point guard rotation on top of missing star center Jarrett Allen.
Injuries have meant more opportunity, however, and it’s telling which players have stepped up and which have failed to seize the chance to make an impact. Evan Mobley has gone from exploding into superstardom one game to wholly overmatched the next, while Max Strus has displayed the streaky shooting that was a hallmark of his game in Miami. It matches the team’s up-and-down performance, including a bad loss at home to the New York Knicks followed by a gritty win in New York the following night.
For a few players, however, their performances have pushed into the stratosphere, sending their stock soaring. For another, the start to the season has been a disappointing one. Let’s dig into these standout performers, one way or the other, to see what they’ve brought to the table this season.
It looked like Isaac Okoro’s time as a Cavaliers may be over after last season, especially with the team adding a new starting small forward in Max Strus. But Okoro kept hanging around the edge of the rotation through the preseason, and when injuries struck he was ready to step up.
Okoro has looked more confident with the basketball this season, with his movements decisive rather than panicked or hesitant. He is shooting a perfectly fine 35.7 percent from 3-point range, which is good enough to keep him on the court in the regular season, and he is adding a high-energy 2.4 offensive rebounds per game, an extremely solid number for a player of his size.
Defensively he has been everywhere, averaging a steal a game and pulling in another 3.2 defensive rebounds, for a career-best 5.6 total rebounds per game. If he continues playing at this level he will force the coaching staff to keep him in the regular rotation even when everyone is healthy.
It may seem impossible for Donovan Mitchell’s stock to soar any higher than it already has. Last season he made his first All-NBA team, averaging 28.3 points per game and memorably dropping 71 points on the Chicago Bulls. Yet to start the 2023-24 season, Mitchell has been even better.
He has had to be just to keep the Cavaliers afloat, as he has been without Allen’s defense to keep the score close and without Darius Garland to keep defenders off of him. He has faced constant double-teams, forcing Mitchell to work his way into the paint and take tough shots just to keep the offense moving.
Mitchell has averaged 31.5 points per game thus far, a career-best, and is hitting 62.7 percent of his 2-pointers, many of them seemingly forced in through sheer willpower. He’s also attacking the glass for 5.5 rebounds per game, a career-best, and swiping 2.8 steals per game, a ludicrous number but one that signals his activity on both ends of the court.
Only Luka Doncic is averaging more points per game, and only Marcus Smart has more steals per game. His Offensive Box Plus-Minus of +8.2 is second-best in the league behind only Stephen Curry, as is his overall BPM of +10.6. Mitchell is doing it all for Cleveland early, and if the Cavaliers can win a few more games to right their spot in the standings he’ll be in the mix for early-season MVP buzz.
The Cleveland Cavaliers had one primary tool to use in free agency to sign a new player: the Non-Taxpayer Mid-Level Exception, which started around $12.4 million. After making their big swing to add Max Strus via a sign-and-trade, the Cavs didn’t use the MLE on one single player, but instead broke it up, using the largest chunk on former Philadelphia 76ers stretch-4 Georges Niang.
The Cavs wanted to improve their shooting, and Niang had hit at least 40 percent of his 3-pointers in five straight seasons. He was supposed to unlock lineups with Evan Mobley at center, space the court and help take the Cleveland offense to another level.
That has not been the case to start the season, as Niang hasn’t been able to hit anything from the field. He is just 5-for-24 from deep (20.8 percent) and hasn’t compensated by hitting his inside shots, either; he is just 4-for-13 from 2-point range. Out of all 162 players this season with at least 35 shot attempts, Niang’s effective field-goal percentage of 31.1 percent ranks dead last.
Head coach J.B. Bickerstaff inserted Niang into the starting lineup in their most recent game against the New York Knicks, and to his credit Niang played hard and pulled down 10 rebounds, earning the Junkyard Dog chain for the night. But even then he shot 1-for-6 from the field and had four fouls against just five points.
For the season, Niang has a plus-minus of -30, and his BPM of -10.8 is among the worst in the league. He is going to need to become prime Moses Malone on the board if he is going to make up for a complete lack of offense, and he will never be more than a try-hard defender. Shooting is streaky and his track record suggests it will come around, but as Dean Wade can testify from last season, at some point a lack of shot-making relegates a player to the outside of the rotation.
Such a reality seems unthinkable given the three-year investment the Cavaliers made in Niang, and they’ll give him every opportunity to get out of this slump. It’s quite the slump, however, and it illustrates how poor of a start to the season Niang, and this team, have had.