The Cavaliers know exactly where they need to sharpen things up: the other end of the floor.
Cleveland spent the middle stretch of this decade building its identity around defense, and the rise was real. The team jumped 20 spots in defensive rating from 2021 to 2022 after Evan Mobley and Jarrett Allen arrived, then pushed all the way to the top with the league’s best defense in 2023. Since then, though, the trend has gone the wrong direction - from first to sixth, then eighth, and finally 15th last season.
Now the message in camp is clear. The Cavs want that old standard back.
“We definitely want to get back to being a top-five defense,” Sam Merrill said. “It had been that way, and then last year that wasn’t the case. That’s been most of our discussion throughout this camp.”
Donovan Mitchell wasn’t interested in dressing it up. When asked about the defense, he kept it simple.
“I don’t like saying much,” Mitchell said. “I want to go out there and just do it.”
The challenge for Cleveland starts with the same place it always does in today’s NBA: the rim. The game may look different than it did 15 years ago, but the value of protecting the basket hasn’t changed. Mobley and Allen give the Cavs a real advantage there, but that edge only works if the point of attack holds up and doesn’t force the bigs to clean up everything behind it.
“It’s understanding the strengths we have with Evan and J.A., but not putting too much on their plates,” Merrill said. “I think there were times last year where we put too much on their plates by getting beat off the dribble, getting into rotations and whatnot. If we can do a better job of keeping the ball out of the paint and force the right shots, that should help us ascend.”
That’s the part Cleveland has to get back to. The defense has long been built on steering teams inside, contesting at the rim and, ideally, making opponents settle for midrange looks. To make that work, the Cavs have to do two things well: run shooters off the line and rotate back out before the next three-point attempt gets clean.
Last season, the rim numbers were still strong enough to look familiar. Cleveland ranked 16th in defensive rim frequency and allowed the fourth-best rim percentage to opponents. The bigger issue was the volume of threes it gave up.
For the Cavs, the best three-point defense is the simplest one: don’t let the shot happen. They had usually done that.
From 2020 through 2025, they ranked in the top ten in fewest threes allowed per 100 possessions. Last season was different, with Cleveland surrendering the eighth-most threes in the league.
Mitchell didn’t go into the details of what needs to change on the perimeter, but he did say the group needs to go “back to what we were.”
There’s also the question of how much an elite defense can really ask from a player like James Harden. He rebounds well and competes harder than he gets credit for, but he doesn’t have the kind of lateral burst that makes life easy against quick guards or screen actions.
Still, the answer isn’t automatically no. The Los Angeles Clippers finished 2024-25 with a 111 defensive rating with Harden on the floor, good for the 83rd percentile, and ended the season with the league’s third-best defense.
The catch is that it takes a full group commitment.
“You have to play team defense,” head coach Kenny Atkinson said. “Getting everybody on the same page and then being able to be adaptable, pliable, flexible. The NBA is not one [on] one defense.”
Cleveland has already shown what it can do offensively under Atkinson. The talent is there to score with anyone. But the gap between a very good team and a championship team usually shows up in how consistently it can win on both ends.
That’s why the Cavs keep circling back to the same place. If they want to reach that next level, they have to rediscover the defense that got them there in the first place.
“We can score with the best,” Mitchell said, “but for us, not having that be our calling card.”
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