The Cleveland Cavaliers are not a good defensive team right now. Since the All-Star break, they rank No. 18 in the league in defensive rating, and in the past 15 games they're all the way down to No. 23.
They have scored enough points in that same stretch (No. 5 in offensive rating, No. 7 in points per game) to win more games than they lose, but there's no beating around the bush; the Cavs went all-in, and in the weeks leading up to the postseason, they do not have a good enough defense to win the East.
Is this a personnel problem? That seems far-fetched. Last season, the Cavs finished No. 8 in defensive rating, and they've added Keon Ellis — a high-level guard defender, and gotten huge contributions from Jaylon Tyson, who's also very solid at stopping the ball. Tyson has missed five of the past 15 games, for the record, but that shouldn't completely break the Cavs defense.
Is it James Harden? We know the new Cavs' star isn't known for defensive production, but he has played on plenty of teams that succeed on defense in spite of him.
Is it effort? A slight drop in defensive dominance from last year's Defensive Player of the Year? Worse 3-point prevention?
A little bit of yes to all of those. The effort might not be obviously and egregiously bad every night, but it's also hard to make the argument that this team goes above and beyond effort-wise. The 3-point defense has been considerably worse than last year, and the Cavs are in the bottom 7 of both opponent 3-point percentage and opponent 3-pointers made.
Evan Mobley is still a top-tier defender who will probably make All-Defense first team. But it doesn't feel like he's changing the game on a nightly basis
Evan Mobley must get back to DPOY form in postseason
I know it's not completely fair to ask one player to fix a team-wide problem. So in order for Evan Mobley to be the difference-maker in the playoffs, those other things must be fixed too. The team needs to start diving for loose balls and giving effort on every defensive possession. The perimeter defense needs to tighten up.
But let's say those things (which do feel fixable, despite how rough things have looked recently) are fixed by postseason time. In that case, Evan Mobley still needs to play the best defense of his life for this Cavs team to maximize its ceiling. I'm done asking him to be a major offensive weapon, because that just feels trite at this point. But if he can do exactly what Chet Holmgren did last year in the playoffs for the Thunder — completely shut off the paint to opponents on a nightly basis — there is hope yet for the Cavs defensive upside.