It almost doesn't seem right to award just one player at a time.
The Cleveland Cavaliers are having a charmed season, 19-3 a quarter of the way into the season as they get off to a historic start. The entire squad deserves recognition -- best team, surprise team, team having the most fun.
At the same time, it's natural to want to identify who is leading the way. Who has been the best offensive player on the team? On defense? Which player had the best individual game?
So let's jump in now that we have reached the quarterpole of the season, with roughly 1/4 of the league's games now concluded. We begin with the Offensive MVP - and it's not the player who usually wins such an award for the Cavaliers.
Offensive MVP: Darius Garland
Darius Garland is having the best season of his career. He is averaging 20.5 points and 6.6 assists -- good but hardly earth-shattering numbers -- but doing so on elite efficiency on a team with multiple players in large roles.
Garland is shooting a career-best 44 percent from deep on a whopping 6.8 attempts per game. Now add in that he is also shooting a career-best from 2-point range, 53.3 percent, and the free-throw line at 95.3 percent. He is very nearly averaging the vaunted 50/40/90 this season.
He leads the team in Offensive Box Plus-Minus, has a better true-shooting than Donovan Mitchell and looks more comfortable running the offense. He is assisting teammates at a high level and his shooting continues to open up spacing when he is running off the ball.
Donovan Mitchell has been the closer, Jarrett Allen hyper-efficient, Evan Mobley has taken the biggest step forward and Ty Jerome and Caris LeVert are shooting the leather off of the ball -- but for the total package, Darius Garland gets the award.
Defensive MVP: Evan Mobley
Evan Mobley has been a dominant defensive player since he entered the league, and finished third in Defensive Player of the Year voting in just his second season. His versatility to defend in space and protect the rim make him even more valuable than the best rim-protecting centers in the association.
Even as his offensive role has taken off this season, Mobley has made small improvements across the board as a defender. His steal and block percentages are at career-highs, he is playing more center than he ever has, and the Cavaliers have excellent rim protection numbers as a team.
Estimated Plus-Minus ranks him in the 98th percentile in defensive impact, with only a handful of names ahead of him: Chet Holmgren, Alex Caruso, Rudy Gobert, Victor Wembanyama stand out. When he is the closest defender inside of six feet, opposing players shoot 12.3 percent worse than normal, a top-five mark in the league.
Any way that you slice it, Evan Mobley is one of the best defensive players in the NBA, and he is the Cavaliers' defensive MVP this season.
Best Bench Player: Ty Jerome
Ty Jerome has been on fire since the jump this season; a pedestrian shooting night against the Denver Nuggets dropped him to sixth in true-shooting percentage. Not on the Cavaliers: in the entire NBA!
After missing an entire season due to injury, Jerome has come back with a vengeance. He is shooting 49.3 percent from 3-point range and 62.1 percent from inside the arc. Add in 6.8 assists per 36 minutes and you get an incendiary offensive player who is making plays again and again for this team.
Best Game: Darius Garland vs Bucks
If we were handing out an award for the worst game this season, Darius Garland may win it for his clunker in Boston. Yet he also earned the "best game" award for the offensive explosion he dealt to the Milwaukee Bucks in a 116-114 victory early last month.
Darius Garland shot 15-for-22 from the field, including a tidy 7-for-11 from beyond the arc, en route to 39 points on an elite 85.2 percent true-shooting percentage. He also added eight assists as he was controlling the offense with confidence. In a game the Cavs won by two points, he was a needed +7. Given that Garland's minutes are always staggered with Donovan Mitchell's, that speaks to how well the team was playing when he had the ball.
Honorable mention to either of Donovan Mitchell's games against the Chicago Bulls or Jarrett Allen's premier performance: 24 points on 11-of-15 shooting, 10 rebounds, three assists, three steals and two blocks.
Best single-game plus-minus? That surprisingly goes to Isaac Okoro, who was a +32 in the Cavaliers' blowout win over the Golden State Warriors.