Back to the drawing board for Evan Mobley and the Cavaliers
The dream season for Evan Mobley and the Cleveland Cavaliers is officially dead. On Tuesday, Cleveland’s season came to an end in the second round of the playoffs with a 114-105 loss to the Indiana Pacers. Despite winning 64 games during the regular season, the Cavaliers did not even make it to the Eastern Conference Finals, and were dispatched by the Pacers in just five games.
There is a pattern at work with the Cavaliers: They collect the wins in the regular season. They get a relatively high seed in the East. They build hopes that they can make a deep run. They get exposed in the playoffs. While this shouldn’t be laid at Evan Mobley’s feet — the Cavs’ problems are pervasive and were magnified at various places on their roster, very much including their backcourt — it remains that superstars in the NBA are the players who carry their teams through tough times. Mobley, to be fair to him, wasn’t fully healthy against the Pacers. That has to be factored into the conversation. Yet, in the fullness of time, there is no doubt that Mobley’s status in the NBA depends on being able to be better and more impactful in the postseason.
That’s when players change the trajectory of their franchise and, in turn, reshape their legacy for the better. This is the challenge for Evan Mobley as another NBA season ends sooner than he hoped.