The Cavaliers spent the summer waiting on LeBron James, and that wait ended the way so many Cleveland fans feared it would. Now the franchise is left with one real way to keep this offseason from being remembered as a total miss: Evan Mobley has to become the player the organization has spent years believing he could be.
Not Jonathan Kuminga. Not Mario Hezonja.
Not James Harden, who had been holding off on a multi-year deal with Cleveland until James made his decision. Mobley is the one who matters most now.
The 25-year-old forward has already become the face of Cleveland’s long-term plan, even if the team once treated him like a future centerpiece rather than the present answer. Since the Cavs took him third overall in 2021, one spot ahead of Scottie Barnes, the organization has talked about him like a franchise-changer.
Koby Altman brushed aside trade talk in his late-May end-of-season availability. J.B.
Bickerstaff pushed Mobley to study Giannis Antetokounmpo, Anthony Davis, Dirk Nowitzki and Kevin Garnett. Teammates have called him a “unicorn.”
One assistant used to call him “H.O.F” - as in Hall-of-Famer. Kenny Atkinson even said last summer that Mobley could one day enter the MVP conversation.
Mobley backed up plenty of that hype in 2024-25. He made his first All-Star team, earned All-NBA honors for the first time and finished the season as Defensive Player of the Year. He also became the first lottery pick from that highly touted draft class to reach the conference finals, which says plenty about how much he has already meant to Cleveland’s rise.
His Year 5 numbers were strong: 18.2 points, 9.0 rebounds, 3.6 assists and 1.7 blocks per game, with shooting splits of 54.6% from the field and 29.7% from 3. But the spring told a different story. Even though the organization said he was the team’s best playoff performer, his numbers dipped, and Cleveland was a statistical negative with him on the floor.
That’s the tension hanging over the Cavs right now. They could have moved Mobley for Giannis Antetokounmpo, Jaylen Brown or, in theory, Kawhi Leonard.
They didn’t. Cleveland chose to keep betting on Mobley’s versatility and the possibility that he eventually becomes the kind of player who can carry a contender.
In the process, he became the reason the Cavs didn’t land Giannis or Brown, and maybe even the reason James never seriously came back into the fold.
This is not 2018 all over again. Cleveland is not staring at a full teardown after James leaves town.
The Cavs are coming off an Eastern Conference finals run. Donovan Mitchell is locked in on a four-year extension.
Harden is expected back. Jarrett Allen remains in place despite the rumor mill.
Mobley is still here, too. The core of a 52-win team that has reached the playoffs four straight seasons is intact, and the Cavaliers still enter the season with the sixth-best odds to win the East.
Still, the offseason has not gone the way they needed. After getting swept by eventual champion New York, the Cavs needed real upgrades to stay in the conference race.
Instead, they lost Dean Wade, Keon Ellis and Larry Nance Jr. in free agency. Wade signed a four-year deal with Philadelphia, Ellis went to Brooklyn on a two-year contract and Nance is headed to Indiana.
Cleveland has spent much of the past month discussing trade ideas involving Max Strus and Dennis Schroder. The only additions are second-round pick Meleek Thomas, who turned heads at summer league, and veteran center Thomas Bryant.
With stars moving elsewhere and the summer grinding on, James was supposed to be the answer. Instead, he chose Philadelphia, and Cleveland is left sorting through the leftovers.
That has pushed Kuminga back into the picture. The Cavs have stayed in constant contact with his Cleveland-based agent, Aaron Turner, and are trying to find a workable financial path for a player who wants $15-20 million per year.
Kuminga, 23, has ties to Atkinson from their Golden State days and has trained in Cleveland before, including a pre-draft workout there five years ago. Last season, he averaged 12.2 points and 5.6 rebounds while shooting 33% from 3-point range in 36 games between Golden State and Atlanta.
Hezonja is another fallback option. The former No. 5 pick has spent the last five years overseas, most recently with Real Madrid after stops with Panathinaikos and UNICS Kazan.
Cleveland has shown interest in bringing him back if the price is right. DeMar DeRozan has also been mentioned around the league as a cheaper option for teams that missed on James, and Nicolas Batum is another name with an Atkinson connection through the French National Team.
But none of those players changes the picture much. The Cavs can only offer the veteran minimum, and that’s not enough to reshape a roster that still needs more.
So the burden lands where it has been heading all along. Either Cleveland changes course and trades Mobley for a star - something that looks unlikely after passing on deals for Antetokounmpo or Brown - or Mobley makes the leap the franchise has been forecasting for five years. That’s the only path left to saving a summer that has gone sideways.
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Kuminga stands out as the more intriguing fit because he has long been viewed as a player Cleveland likes, and he has worked out in the city before. Hezonja, meanwhile, brings a different kind of appeal as a former lottery pick trying to make his way back after spending time overseas, giving the Cavs another option as they weigh how to add talent and keep the roster flexible for whatever comes next. [Read more 🡒]
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P.J. Washington has surfaced as a name worth monitoring because of how well his game could slot into that mix, giving the Cavaliers another option in the frontcourt without forcing them to reshuffle everything else. His situation in Dallas is part of what makes this interesting, since the Mavericks' roster crunch and broader reset could eventually make him more accessible, and Cleveland cannot afford to miss if a player with that kind of fit becomes available. [Read more 🡒]