OKLAHOMA CITY — The NBA great to whom the Cleveland Cavaliers’ Evan Mobley is most often compared is still Kevin Garnett.
The comparisons go back to at least the summer between Mobley’s rookie and second pro seasons, and at the outset of the current campaign, Garnett, the Naismith Hall of Famer, said Mobley is the current player who most reminds him of himself.
“When I watch him, he spaces up, he attacks the rim,” Garnett said on his podcast in October. “He uses his left hand more than me. Evan Mobley is long, he blocks shots, he’s effective at the post. He can hit from 15 or 17 feet. I’m more energetic and passionate than him … but Evan Mobley is the future.”
In a short time, we’ll learn if Mobley can break through as an All-Star. He’s yet to make it in three seasons, whereas Garnett was an All-Star in years 2 and 3. Mobley does not appear to be in position to make the All-Star Game as a starter (according to fan voting results that were updated Jan. 9, Mobley was in eighth place among Eastern Conference frontcourt players), but the coaches could vote him in as a reserve. He is enjoying a career year in which his versatility has never been more apparent and is shining through on a historically good regular-season team.
One of the ways in which Garnett and Mobley are different, which Garnett also mentioned on the same podcast, was the meanness or tenacity that has, in the past, been lacking from Mobley. Garnett said “he (sic) got to go to the next level … he (sic) got to get a little meaner.”
Fair enough, though Mobley, en route to his career high 19.0 points per game on a career-most 12.7 shots, 9.0 rebounds and 1.4 blocks this season, has made opponents take notice that he is indeed a bigger, tougher version of his former self.
“Mobley got a little stronger, bigger,” Oklahoma City big man Isaiah Hartenstein said after facing Mobley last week in Cleveland. Hartenstein added “they’re a little tougher for sure,” in reference to the Cavs’ interior at large, of which Mobley makes up a significant portion.
The Cavs (34-5) and Thunder (33-6) are set for a much-ballyhooed rematch Thursday of last week’s thriller (and TV ratings bonanza) in which Cleveland won, 129-122, and Mobley was dominant in a game that featured, and will feature again, the top two teams in the NBA.
The league will be watching, and the 7:30 p.m. Eastern national TV game on TNT is as good an opportunity as any for Mobley to make another All-Star pitch to his peers and media members with a vote (starters are determined by a combined vote of fans, media and players), as well as to the coaches who pick the reserves.
Aside from the attitude and the All-Star appearances, perhaps the biggest difference so far between Mobley and Garnett is something the 23-year-old Cavs star is doing that Garnett never really did in 21 pro seasons: taking and making 3-pointers.
In this regard, this season, Mobley is much more Al Horford than Garnett, and that’s a favorable comparison — a good sign for Mobley and for Cleveland.
“I saw this with Al Horford, when you give the guy the green light, what you see is the work put in behind it,” said Cavs coach Kenny Atkinson, who was an assistant coach in Atlanta the year Horford first started hoisting 3s.
In Atkinson’s last season with the Hawks, 2015-16, Horford jumped from barely shooting one 3 per game to attempting 3.1. A three-time All-Star, Horford, 38 and still a force for the Boston Celtics, hasn’t averaged fewer than 3.0 3s per game since that campaign and has on three occasions (including this season) averaged five or more 3s. He is a career 37.8 percent shooter from deep, and over the two seasons before this one, Horford made better than 42 percent of his 3s as a 6-9 center.
Evan Mobley defends Al Horford as he drives to the rim, but Horford has made his mark more and more in recent seasons from 3. (David Richard / USA Today)
On Tuesday night in Indianapolis, the 6-11 Mobley made three of the four 3s he attempted, giving him 105 3-point attempts in 37 games — more attempts than in any of his first three years. He is making 43 percent of his 3s (shooting about three of them per game), a staggering jump from the 37 percent he made last year and the 23 percent he made in his first two seasons. The three Mobley made in the win over the Pacers stand as his seventh game this season with at least three 3-pointers; he only had one such game in his first three years.
To finish the Garnett-Mobley comparison, Garnett was a 27.5 percent shooter from beyond the arc and averaged more than one 3-pointer per game once in a career that spanned more than two decades.
The way NBA basketball is played now has changed from Garnett’s heyday (his last season was 2015-16, when Horford was just learning to shoot the 3), and now it is almost a requirement for four of five players on the court at any time to be competent 3-point shooters.
But needing most players to be able to shoot 3s is not enough to guarantee that Mobley could teach himself how to do it. Fans familiar with Mobley’s career and those who follow the Cavs know that it was not only a point of emphasis for two coaching staffs to add the 3-point shot to his repertoire, but that doing so was said to be the answer for how Mobley and Jarrett Allen could co-exist in the Cavs’ starting lineup.
Allen is a 6-10 center who does not shoot 3s. The long-held theory was playing two non-shooting bigs together would suffocate the Cavs’ floor spacing, which is paramount for success in the modern NBA offense.
Former Cavs and current Detroit Pistons coach J.B. Bickerstaff preached last season for Mobley to incorporate the deep shot, even if they didn’t go in. Opposing defenses needed to respect Mobley’s 3-point shot enough to send a defender out to him on the perimeter.
While there was growth for Mobley in that area last year, he wasn’t comfortable enough to take or make those shots in the playoffs. Bickerstaff was dismissed after a second-round loss to the Celtics and Atkinson took over. Mobley’s emergence as a 3-point threat is a here-and-now development.
“I don’t know what his work routine looked like (last season), I have no idea,” Atkinson said. “But what I see right now is that a big part of his player-development plan and on-court work is dedicated to the 3-point shot. And then with that 3-point shooting comes close-out offense … (defenses) start to close out (on Mobley, which draws defenders away from the paint).”
The Cavs own the league’s top-rated offense and shoot a better percentage from 3 than anyone. They also play much differently under Atkinson than they did with Bickerstaff. Atkinson puts the ball in Mobley’s hands much more often at the start of possessions and incorporates cutting and screening away from the ball.
Cleveland shot out to a 15-0 start with prolific shooting all over the court, but Mobley’s growth as a 3-point shooter came later. In November, in fact, Mobley was making just 28 percent of his 3s and only shooting about two of them per game.
Neither Atkinson nor Mobley has an exact answer as to the reason Mobley has come on so strong as an outside shooter. They just appreciate the results.
“I know I’ve been working on it. … I feel like there is still more to come,” Mobley told reporters Tuesday in Indianapolis. “Every time one goes in, my confidence keeps going up and up.”
“You can say our ceiling’s higher as he becomes more proficient and the quantity of his 3s go up,” Atkinson added. “My personal opinion is that’s really going to help translate in the playoffs.”
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Of all the things Mobley did well in the first game against the Thunder last week, shooting the 3 was not one of them. He was 0-of-3 from beyond the arc but otherwise torched OKC’s top-ranked defense with 21 points on 8-of-10 shooting for 2-point field goals. He added 10 boards and seven assists, basically drilling the Thunder’s interior defense with Allen while OKC sold out to bother Donovan Mitchell (it worked — he shot 3 of 16) and attempted to run Cleveland off the perimeter in general.
Thunder coach Mark Daigneault praised Mobley’s 3-point shooting before that game, saying “that’s why he’s a good player.
“He’s pretty dynamic there,” Daigneault said. “He’s really grown, I think, stronger than he’s ever been. And the shooting was obviously, you know, better than it’s ever been. It’s still low volume. I don’t know if he’s shooting three or four a game. But, you know, you can’t balk at 40 percent. He’s making them. So that’s why they’re tough. There’s a reason why they’re scoring the way they are. There’s a lot of good teams out there that are trying to stop them and have been having a very hard time.”
The Cavs are prolific on offense because they do not have to rely on any one player. It isn’t Mitchell’s job to carry the offense, as it felt to him in the past under Bickerstaff. Darius Garland is enjoying his best season since Mitchell’s arrival in Cleveland. The Cavs have a deep bench with plenty of shooting. Allen has been excellent in his role, and of course, there is Mobley as a complete package. His defense and ball skills and rim rolling are all as important to the Cavs’ overall attack as those 3s.
“We’ve got to balance that. … We don’t want this to be Brook Lopez 2.0, right?” Atkinson said. “Brook’s shooting 11 3s and is never in the paint. And I love Brook, but that’s like the extreme.”
No, there is no extreme makeover coming with Mobley’s game. As for his attitude, well, let’s let Garnett be the judge of that at the conclusion of the Cavs’ season — whenever it might be.
Mobley surely has something to do with that.
(Top photo of Evan Mobley: Jason Miller / Getty Images)
