Jarrett Allen says Evan Mobley is doing things in practice that he had not seen before, and Cleveland is now asking the big man to take that growth into games. Allen said Mobley improves every year, but this season is supposed to be different: the skills that have shown up behind closed doors need to show up on the floor when the games count.
That is why Mobley is being searched now. He is coming off a season in which he averaged 18.2 points, 9.0 rebounds and 3.6 assists on 54.6% shooting, won Defensive Player of the Year and made his first All-Star team in his fourth season. He also finished the year with 17.0 points, 8.1 rebounds, 3.9 assists and 1.8 blocks across 18 playoff games, a line that included 24 points in Game 3 of the conference finals against the New York Knicks. For a player Cleveland drafted third overall in 2021 out of USC, the next step is no longer about promise. It is about usage.
Allen said the new work has centered on ball handling, something Mobley has been developing since his rookie season. That matters because a steadier dribble changes what Cleveland can ask him to do. If he can bring the ball up against pressure, attack a closeout or keep a possession alive without handing the possession back, he gives Cleveland another way to score when the first option is taken away. It also helps explain why the team has been experimenting with a two-man pairing involving James Harden this preseason. In Allen’s words, Harden can get to the basket and find Mobley, or Mobley can handle it himself while Harden sets it, which makes the alignment more than a novelty. It is a test of whether Cleveland can put more offense in Mobley’s hands without losing the defensive base that still defines him.
That plan comes with a hard edge. Bleacher Report ranked Mobley 32nd among the NBA’s top 99 players entering the season, even after he won Defensive Player of the Year and earned his first All-Star nod. Donovan Mitchell has already pushed back on the idea that Mobley’s accomplishments are being dismissed, and Kenny Atkinson has done the same after Mobley was left out of the NBA’s annual GM survey. The skepticism is not about whether Mobley is good. It is about whether his growth has reached the point where it changes games on a nightly basis.
Allen sounded convinced it will. He said Mobley keeps adding to his game and that everybody in the building sees it. The next proof point comes in regular-season games, where practice habits either turn into a bigger offensive role or fade back into the background. For Cleveland, the question is no longer whether Mobley has more in him. It is whether the version of him Allen sees every day is the version opponents will have to stop.
