It would have been understandable, if not conventional wisdom, to expect the Cavaliers to struggle a bit early on this season.
After swinging a stunning late-offseason trade for three-time All-Star Donovan Mitchell, Cleveland lost the ability to develop true on-court chemistry during the preseason when Evan Mobley suffered an ankle injury that kept him out of the lineup. Then, in the team’s season- opening loss two weeks ago, Darius Garland, the other All-Star member of the Cavs backcourt, was sidelined with an eye laceration that he’s still yet to return from. The predicament made for a bit of an uphill climb for Mitchell, who’d now be a lone, star wing surrounded by a completely different sort of offensive talent than what he had with the Jazz, who led the association in offense last season with an elite screener and an abundance of floor spacing.
In the five games since Cleveland blew a late lead in Toronto, though, the Cavs have been just fine. Better than fine, actually. They’ve reeled off five straight to open the campaign 5-1 without Garland as Mitchell has picked up the slack with MVP-caliber averages: 32.2 points and 7.3 assists on 49.6% shooting overall and 45.5% from three while playing a league-leading 39 minutes per night.
It’s certainly one hell of a way to get around the “How will Donovan Mitchell fit in?” question.
Mitchell’s early takeover has been a work of art. After dropping 41 in a victory over the defending conference-champion Celtics last week, he torched the Knicks with a dominant you-should’ve-just-given-into-Danny-Ainge performance Sunday: 38 points and 12 assists, with eight triples; five of which he sank in a tone-setting first quarter.
More of the game has been placed in Mitchell’s hands than he’s even used to. His usage rate—the percentage of team possessions that end with him shooting or turning the ball over—is virtually the same as it was in 2021–22, and in 2020–21. But with Garland out, his ballhandling has increased by nearly 50%. Mitchell’s 9.1 minutes of possession per game, which rank second in the NBA behind Luka Dončić, are up from last season’s 6.2 minutes per night.
He’s making the most of the extra time on the ball, logging a career-high 34% assist rate while also doing max damage when calling his own number. Mitchell rates in the 98th percentile in isolation offense, shooting a blistering 70% on his one-on-one looks, per Synergy Sports.
Perhaps most impressive is the fact that he’s been able to smoke opposing defenses despite them keying in on him from one play to the next. In Utah, where the Jazz had three other wing starters who shot nearly 40% from deep, stoppers often couldn’t limit Mitchell by throwing too much attention at him. With Cleveland, which features 33% career three-point shooter Caris LeVert and a pair of non-shooters in Mobley and Jarrett Allen, it’s a more worthwhile gamble to make the other guys beat you if they’re stationed out past the free-throw line. (That can be a risk, too, as Mitchell has shown the ability to pick defenses apart when they neglect the bigs.)
Yet Mitchell has gotten the best of nearly everyone. The best example came Sunday, when he used his incredible quickness and footwork to all but dice three defenders by splitting a pick and roll, then turning on the spin cycle above the charity stripe. The result was an enormous, video-game style jam for the 6' 1" Mitchell. Except this, like the Cavs’ success so far, was real.
“Donovan was not going to let us lose this game,” coach J.B. Bickerstaff told reporters after the victory. “He is a complete basketball player. The dude is elite. I don’t know what he can’t do on the floor.”
To be clear, there are a number of other factors at play in the Cavaliers’ fast, shorthanded start. The team plays at the pace of a tortoise, which helps them limit opponents to the fewest three-point tries in the league on a night-to-night basis. Second-chances against the Cavs are rare. Cleveland thrives on turning opponents over, and when that happens, the club has been fantastic at cashing in on the mistakes, scoring 1.53 points per possession after forcing a miscue. That's the third-highest rate in basketball, according to advanced-data site, Inpredictable.
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Like with any team, there are areas to keep an eye on. How do things change, with Mitchell and the Cavs more generally, once Garland returns? It’s natural to think about how those two will play off one another within the offense. (Bickerstaff has already vowed to stagger their minutes so that at least one of them is on the court most of the time.) But the real question is whether Cleveland—currently a top-three defense—can continue to be elite on D with a pair 6' 1" guards defending the perimeter. The pathway to getting stops is clearer when one man is sidelined.
Similarly, there’s still the question of which player would be best to step in and grab the starting small forward role on a more permanent basis. (It’s been a moot point with Garland injured, since there’s been an extra spot available.) LeVert can score—he also had 41 in the win over Boston—and has been a good distributor to start the season. But he isn’t a high-level defender, and isn’t the most natural fit to try and stop the murderer’s row of scoring forwards—Giannis, Tatum, Durant—that any East contender might have to go through during a playoff run. Isaac Okoro, the small forward who’d seem best suited for that role on D, hasn’t looked anywhere near aggressive enough on offense to hold down the spot, and has seen a bit less playing time as a result. Dean Wade, the Cavs’ formerly undrafted forward, has been the best shooter to fill the role, and may get more opportunities in the future. But in all honesty, it could end up being Mobley, the towering 21-year-old talent, to take on such defensive responsibilities.
It’s a beautiful, privileged set of problems to even be pondering for the moment. As I wrote in my season-preview feature on the Cavs, it’s been almost 25 years—1998—since they reached the playoffs without LeBron on the roster.
If they can keep up this momentum—or even a moderate chunk of it—once Garland returns, they’ll be able to dice through that statistic the way Mitchell has with defenses thus far. And so far, it’s looking like they’ll be able to do just that.
Meat and potatoes: Good reads from SI this past week
Wendell Cruz/USA TODAY Sports
My teammate Howard Beck penned a column on Kyrie Irving retweeting an antisemitic film at a time where antisemitism is markedly on the rise.
Rohan Nadkarni went long on Ben Simmons, and why the struggling Nets to try his hand at center. In a separate piece, he wrote about the disappointing Sixers, and how their early-season issues include franchise centerpiece Joel Embiid.
I shined a light on the unexpectedly fun Utah Jazz, looking at why they’ve had so much success early on.
Our Ben Pickman wrote about what’s been among the most fun NBA rookie classes in recent memory.
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