For the Cavaliers, the lesson isn’t hiding in some far-off contender. It’s sitting right in New York, where the Knicks found a way to make a one-big setup work and turned it into a blueprint Cleveland should be studying closely.
That matters because the Cavs have spent years betting on Evan Mobley and Jarrett Allen as the frontcourt answer. Koby Altman and his staff passed on moving Mobley in the chase for Giannis Antetokounmpo, and Allen - on a very tradeable contract - is now the longest tenured player on the roster.
Cleveland has committed to this pairing. The problem is that the payoff still hasn’t shown up.
Around the league, the title teams have leaned away from classic two-big starts more often than not. The 2022 Warriors went with Kevon Looney and Draymond Green.
The 2023 Nuggets had Nikola Jokic with Aaron Gordon. When the Celtics won in 2024, Al Horford was the primary center with Jayson Tatum at the four in a small-ball look.
The 2026 Knicks followed the same general direction with Karl-Anthony Towns and OG Anunoby in a non-traditional frontcourt. The one major exception was the 2025 Thunder, who started Chet Holmgren and Isaiah Hartenstein - the kind of setup Cleveland has been trying to copy.
But that’s where the comparison breaks down. Mobley and Allen simply are not Holmgren and Hartenstein.
And beyond personnel, Oklahoma City’s whole operation is cleaner. Mark Daigneault’s team has posted a higher net rating than Cleveland for the past three years, which points to a sharper scheme and a better-run system.
Add Shai Gilgeous-Alexander into the mix - maybe the best player in the league - and the Thunder become the kind of outlier that can’t be duplicated.
New York, though? That’s a different story.
The Knicks showed how a team can get more out of a single big by trimming down the clutter around him. Towns has long carried the label of a shaky defender, and there’s real evidence behind it. In the 2025 postseason, he posted a 113.6 defensive rating, a touch worse than league average, and 26.3% of his playoff minutes came alongside Mitchell Robinson.
In 2026, that changed. Towns’ playoff defensive rating dropped to 102.8, well above league average, and his minutes next to Robinson fell all the way to 4.9%.
That shift suggests the issue may not have been Towns alone. Maybe the bigger problem was the jumbo look itself, with him constantly being pushed out of position.
And if Towns could look better as the only big, maybe that points to a broader truth: sometimes teams defend better when they go smaller.
The Knicks also had the right pieces around him. Anunoby and Mikal Bridges gave them size on the wing and enough help on the interior without pulling them away from their best work on the perimeter.
Offensively, the setup clicked too. New York posted a 122.1 offensive rating in Towns’ minutes without Robinson.
Cleveland’s version is messier, but the numbers still tell a story. In the 2026 playoffs, Mobley played 51.3% of his minutes with Allen, and those lineups were only slightly above average in net rating.
Allen’s minutes without Mobley were strong, good for a +9.7 net rating. Mobley, by contrast, struggled when he was out there alone, finishing at -5.8.
That’s where the Cavaliers have to get smarter. The most common Mobley-without-Allen lineup featured Dennis Schroder, Donovan Mitchell, Max Strus and Sam Merrill.
In 49 minutes, that group was a -28.6, which is a rough number by any measure. The offense may have had talent, but defensively it looked nothing like the kind of wing support New York gave Towns.
Mobley’s next most used lineup without Allen included James Harden, Mitchell, Merrill and Dean Wade. That group looked far more workable. Wade gave Cleveland the kind of physical wing presence that fits next to a lone big, and the results backed it up: a +15.9 in 23 minutes.
That’s the opening for Cleveland. The league is drifting away from multiple bigs sharing the floor all the time, and the Knicks just showed how a team can adjust around that reality. If the Cavaliers are going to stick with Mobley and Allen, the real challenge is building the right rotation around them - and finding more chances to stagger their minutes so each can survive, and maybe even thrive, without the other.
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