CLEVELAND, Ohio — The future of the Cavs has always come with an asterisk, and it has Evan Mobley’s name next to it.
Everyone inside the organization knows what the ceiling could look like. Mobley knows it, too.
The path to it, though, has never been linear. It’s layered, uncomfortable and demanding. Becoming a complete two-way player isn’t just about adding moves or strength. It’s about learning how to carry weight for possessions, for lineups, for stretches of games when the offense has no choice but to run through you.
That responsibility arrived early this season.
With Darius Garland sidelined to begin the year following offseason surgery on his left great toe, Mobley was thrust into an unfamiliar role. For the first time in his career, he wasn’t just an offensive connector or release valve. He was a focal point.
Given that need for a productive force on the offensive end in the second unit, Kenny Atkinson split up the tandem of Mobley and Donovan Mitchell, which played 1,718 minutes together last season and had a net rating of plus-11.1 per 100 possessions.
What followed was messy.
Mobley saw more defensive attention than at any point in his young career. Teams swarmed the paint. They met him early, bumped him often and dared him to solve problems before he had fully learned how. After a few weeks of experimentation and Garland making his season debut, Atkinson swiftly reunited Mobley and Mitchell in an attempt to restore some offensive equilibrium.
Now, with Garland sidelined again because of a right great toe sprain, Mobley has been forced back into that offensive hub role. Only this time, he’s better prepared and with a level of control that didn’t exist earlier in the season.
The key for Mobley, at this point in his career, is consistency.
“Got no choice,” Mitchell said. “He’s got to go out there and find a way. … It’s forcing him to go into that space. I think that’s what we’re seeing. That’s what it’s going to take because it’s easy when you have myself, you have DG, or [De’Andre Hunter] out there to kind of be like, all right, I’m gonna kind of back down. It’s like, no, you got it.”
In Friday night’s 123-118 victory over the Sacramento Kings, Mobley didn’t back down. He anchored the second unit and authored one of the most complete performances of his career. Twenty-nine points, 13 rebounds, seven assists and four blocks.
But it was the way Mobley went about his business that stood out.
The self-proclaimed quiet guy was forceful, aggressive and determined to leave his mark on the game — drawing comparisons to one of the sport’s most dominant players.
“He was like Shaquille [O’Neal] tonight,” Cavs head coach Kenny Atkinson said. “I mean, seriously, the way he was just rim, rim, rim and then dominated the defensive side, that was one of the most dominant performances that I’ve seen from him, and we needed it.
“…You discover things, and we’re discovering he’s starting to blossom … maybe the best performance since I’ve been here that I’ve seen.”
Still, one night doesn’t define development. Consistency does.
Mobley doesn’t need to channel O’Neal every evening. What Cleveland needs is the assertive version of him to show up every night, regardless of who shares the floor. That’s where the tension in his growth lives — the balance between versatility and identity.
“I think he’s versatile,” Atkinson said. “I don’t think there’s one thing to say, man. He’s not Yao and has the jump hook, right? Or [DeMar] DeRozan’s got the spin move. It’s not that. I think he’s versatile. I think he works within the flow of the offense, but it’s almost a curse of versatility. … his biggest skill is winning.
“Sometimes, if you’re just kind of like a low post player, you get really good at that. If you’re a kind of 3-point shooter, that’s your niche. Evan’s kind of good at a lot of things, and he finds it within the game, so I don’t think there’s one thing to say, man, this is his thing, and maybe he gets there. I think he’s working on what that looks like. I know we worked in the summer, you do have to have an end-of-game package.”
Jack of all trades. Master of what? That reality shaped Mobley’s offseason.
He worked relentlessly on tightening his handle through physicality to be able to functionally shoulder the load offensively. At times, he can get pushed off his spot and made uncomfortable. That’s how opposing teams attack him. Disrupt his rhythm before he builds momentum, because once Mobley gets downhill or in a motion set, he’s hard to stop.
Mobley may never be the most physically imposing big on the floor, but his mindset is maturing.
“I think when I get in that painted area, I think I control it on defense and the offensive end,” Mobley said when asked what area of offense he mastered. “So anywhere in that painted area is mine.”
He is the reigning Defensive Player of the Year and leads the league by a wide margin in defended field goal attempts. Nobody has questions about his defensive prowess. The question has always been whether he can maintain that dominance while carrying more offensive responsibility — especially in lineups where the safety nets are gone.
“I don’t care about the blocked shots and the defense,” Mitchell said postgame because of the expectation on that end of the floor. “…In this game, [he] was like, I’m just going to go. I’m going to go. I’m gonna attack, and that’s what we like to see. A lot of times it’s like he has to just go and be aggressive, and that’s what it was for 48 minutes tonight. He was like, I’m going to attack and made good decisions.
“That’s what you want to see out of him. Not so much necessarily us continuing to get it to him, but him being like, I’m going downhill, they can’t stop me, I’m getting to the paint. If they draw three at me, then I make the pass; if not, I’m going to finish. And he did it for 48 minutes and that was the most amazing part that I saw tonight.”
That’s the standard now. Forty-eight minutes of presence. Forty-eight minutes of engagement. Not flashes. Not quarters. Entire games.
Mobley has set high goals for himself, and he’s grown more comfortable saying them publicly — an understated but meaningful step in the evolution toward stardom, where ambition invites scrutiny and expectation.
Last season, he said he wanted to be one of the top players in the league within five years.
This season, he’s taking on the mental and physical battle to reach that goal and perhaps an even more demanding one that surfaced after Friday’s conquest.
“Recently, I’ve just been diving more into myself and really just trying to focus on how I can just get better mentally and physically,” Mobley said. “I feel like that hard work has been paying off, and I’m going to continue to do that so we’re ready for playoffs.
“It’s hard being a two-way player, but I think that’s kind of my superpower is that I’m able to do that and able to contest shots on one end and still run out and be an offensive threat on the other end. So I just keep building that offensive side, and it’s where I could be [the] top two-way player there is.”
That’s the bet Cleveland made on draft night. Not that Mobley would master one thing quickly, but that he would eventually master the balance — offense without compromise, defense without fatigue, impact without shortcuts.
Maybe fans have had to wait longer than they’ve expected, but Mobley believes that this recent stretch is only the beginning of a consistent player who wants to be considered one of the best to do it.
“Trusting the process and trusting all the work I put in, that was the main focus that I’ve been working on,” Mobley said. “I feel like these past few games, it’s really been showing. So I’m just going to continue what I’ve been doing, and I think it’s going to keep growing from there.”