{"id":368450,"date":"2025-12-25T18:06:07","date_gmt":"2025-12-25T18:06:07","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/368450\/"},"modified":"2025-12-25T18:06:07","modified_gmt":"2025-12-25T18:06:07","slug":"cavaliers-evan-mobley-returns-vs-knicks","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/368450\/","title":{"rendered":"Cavaliers&#8217; Evan Mobley returns vs. Knicks"},"content":{"rendered":"<p>NEW YORK \u2014 <a href=\"https:\/\/www.sportsnet.ca\/basketball\/nba\/players\/evan-mobley\/d64b602e-45f2-4ba9-878b-0a4f7210ec77\" class=\"sn-player-post-link\" target=\"_self\" data-player=\"d64b602e-45f2-4ba9-878b-0a4f7210ec77\" rel=\"noopener nofollow\">Evan Mobley<\/a> was available to play for the Cleveland Cavaliers against New York on Thursday, making it back from a strained left calf in less than two weeks when it was originally feared he could miss twice that.<\/p>\n<p>The Cavaliers said the reigning NBA Defensive Player of the Year would miss two to four weeks after he sustained a Grade 1 strain of the calf on Dec. 12. Instead, he missed only five games before providing a big Christmas boost to Cleveland.<\/p>\n<p>Coach Kenny Atkinson said Mobley had progressed in recent days to playing 3-on-3 and 4-on-4 in practices, then worked out before the game, and the Cavaliers upgraded him from questionable to available to play.<\/p>\n<p>\u201cOne thing about Evan I\u2019ve learned, he heals pretty quick,\u201d Atkinson said before the game. \u201cLike, he\u2019s 23. Sometimes age is a factor in these things.\u201d<\/p>\n<p>Mobley was not in the starting lineup, joining players such as Victor Wembanyama and Zion Williamson in coming off the bench in recent games after returning from their injuries.<\/p>\n<p>Mobley is averaging a career-high 19.1 points per game and adding 9.3 rebounds per game. His addition is another positive for a Cavaliers team that has dealt with injuries during a 17-14 start. But Cleveland came into New York after consecutive victories and Atkinson said he could see momentum starting to build for a team that won 64 games in 2024-25.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"NEW YORK \u2014 Evan Mobley was available to play for the Cleveland Cavaliers against New York on Thursday,&hellip;\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":343579,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[434],"tags":[49,48,459,82],"class_list":["post-368450","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-nba","tag-ca","tag-canada","tag-nba","tag-sports"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/368450","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=368450"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/368450\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/343579"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=368450"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=368450"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=368450"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}