{"id":557477,"date":"2026-01-24T10:00:23","date_gmt":"2026-01-24T10:00:23","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/nba\/557477\/"},"modified":"2026-01-24T10:00:23","modified_gmt":"2026-01-24T10:00:23","slug":"4-takeaways-from-cavs-123-118-win-over-kings-evan-mobley-puts-together-dominant-game-2","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/nba\/557477\/","title":{"rendered":"4 Takeaways from Cavs 123-118 win over Kings: Evan Mobley puts together \u2018dominant\u2019 game"},"content":{"rendered":"

CLEVELAND \u2014 The Cleveland Cavaliers<\/a> have won nine of their last 13 games<\/a>, and still aren\u2019t close to playing up to their full potential<\/a>. That\u2019s both encouraging and frustrating. Friday\u2019s ugly 123-118 win<\/a> against the Sacramento Kings showed why.<\/p>\n

Head coach Kenny Atkinson has made some crazy comparisons during his two seasons in Cleveland. After Evan Mobley\u2019s 29-point, 13-rebound, and seven-assist performance, he compared him to Shaquille O\u2019Neal.<\/p>\n

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\u201cMan, I don\u2019t know about that,\u201d Mobley said.<\/p>\n

Mobley wasn\u2019t Shaq, but he completely controlled the paint on both sides of the floor.<\/p>\n

Before the game, Kings head coach Doug Christie said his team needed to push Mobley off of his spots. That didn\u2019t happen.<\/p>\n

Mobley went 6-8 on shots in the restricted area and 12-18 on overall shots in the paint. He was able to get to the basket on repeat, and when he was cut off, the hook shot and turnaround jumper were falling. Mobley is at his best when he\u2019s playing aggressively and making quick and strong decisions. That \u2014 combined with going against a weaker Sacramento frontcourt \u2014 led to his scoring success.<\/p>\n

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\u201cThat\u2019s what we like to see,\u201d Donovan Mitchell said of Mobley\u2019s mindset. \u201cA lot of times, he just has to go up and be aggressive, and that\u2019s what he was for 48 minutes tonight. He was like, \u2018I\u2019m going to attack and make good decisions.\u2019 \u2026 Not so much necessarily us continuing to get it to him, but him being like, \u2018I\u2019m getting downhill. They can\u2019t stop me. I\u2019m getting to the paint.\u2019\u201d<\/p>\n

The offensive showcase extended to his playmaking as well. Mobley has become more comfortable finding the open man when extra defenders have come his way. This is the area he\u2019s grown the most since the beginning of the season, when he had a difficult time handling double teams.<\/p>\n

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Mobley was more impressive defensively.<\/p>\n

He registered four blocks and was a large reason why the Kings converted just 62.5%<\/a> of their shots at the rim (32nd percentile<\/a>).<\/p>\n

Mobley was able to make what was an overall bad performance from his teammates look passable. It\u2019s why the Cavs had a solid 108.7 defensive rating<\/a> with Mobley on the floor on a night they had a 121.6 defensive rating<\/a> as a team.<\/p>\n

\u201cIt was one of the most dominant games we\u2019ve ever seen from him,\u201d Atkinson said.<\/p>\n

These types of games are in there. The problem is figuring out how to recreate these performances more consistently. <\/p>\n

\u201cSometimes these things happen when you have guys out,\u201d Atkinson said. \u201cWe have Sam [Merrill], Max [Strus], and DG (Darius Garland), our playmakers, guys that create advantages. We got him out there with units, especially when we separate those two (Mobley and Donovan Mitchell). Now, no Don, he\u2019s got to kind of do it. I\u2019m sure we\u2019re doing more things for him, but I think he\u2019s just taking the burden. I think it\u2019s a lot of its circumstances.\u201d<\/p>\n

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Atkinson has been splitting up Mitchell and Mobley more with bench lineups. That wasn\u2019t what Atkinson did most of the last regular season, when the duo was in the 94th percentile in point differential<\/a>. It hasn\u2019t had the same success this year, and more importantly, lineups without either haven\u2019t worked with Darius Garland not at 100%.<\/p>\n

\u201cI get to be the guy that creates offense for us,\u201d Mobley said. \u201cI feel like I\u2019ve been doing a good job this past few days, and I feel like I just got to keep stacking days and figure out where I can keep getting better.\u201d<\/p>\n

The consistency isn\u2019t quite there for the Cavs yet either.<\/p>\n

They took meaningful steps forward in this game. Instead of turning it over 21 times, as they did in their previous two outings, they gave it away just six times (97th percentile<\/a>).<\/p>\n

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That said, they didn\u2019t improve in all the areas they would\u2019ve liked to. Their defensive integrity at the point of attack remains a concern. It\u2019s part of the reason they allowed the Kings to shoot 39.4% from beyond the arc, which is well above their season-long average of 35.2%.<\/p>\n

Still, the Cavs need all the wins they can get at this point of the season, given who\u2019s out of the lineup. They\u2019ve done a better job of taking care of their matchups against opponents that they should beat, even if they aren\u2019t exactly peaking at this time.<\/p>\n

\u201cIt\u2019s not always going to be pretty,\u201d Mitchell said. \u201cIt\u2019s at the point now where I don\u2019t really care how we do it as long as we continue to win games. \u2026 I think we\u2019ve done a great job of believing as a collective.<\/p>\n

\u201cLast year was last year. It\u2019s a different year, different season. This is who we are. We\u2019re going to continue to build and find ways to win.\u201d<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"CLEVELAND \u2014 The Cleveland Cavaliers have won nine of their last 13 games, and still aren\u2019t close to…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":556892,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":"","_share_on_mastodon":"0"},"categories":[3792],"tags":[7,193,791,864,3215,576,3627,4056,6,986,477,4055,2627],"class_list":["post-557477","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-sacramento-kings","tag-basketball","tag-cleveland-cavaliers","tag-darius-garland","tag-donovan-mitchell","tag-doug-christie","tag-evan-mobley","tag-kenny-atkinson","tag-kings","tag-nba","tag-sacramento","tag-sacramento-kings","tag-sacramentokings","tag-strus"],"share_on_mastodon":{"url":"https:\/\/channels.im\/@nba\/115949498194080663","error":""},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/nba\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/557477","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/nba\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/nba\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/nba\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/nba\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=557477"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/nba\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/557477\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/nba\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/556892"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/nba\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=557477"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/nba\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=557477"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/nba\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=557477"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}