An anonymous NBA scout still sees one glaring hurdle in Evan Mobley’s climb: the 3-point shot.
Mobley’s overall profile keeps getting louder in Cleveland. He won Defensive Player of the Year in 2024-25, added All-Star and second-team All-NBA honors, and finished in the top 10 of MVP voting. But in Sports Illustrated’s Friday Cavaliers preview, the scout pointed to one part of Mobley’s game that has not kept pace.
"I thought Mobley was going to break out two years ago when he won Defensive Player of the Year," the scout said. "But he really hasn't grown since that point.
He's taken a little bit of a step backwards offensively. I thought he would've developed in more areas of his game.
I always felt like he had to really get the three down in order to take another step. He has not."
That criticism comes with Mobley’s shooting numbers still under the microscope. He hit 29.7% from 3-point range last season, though he also made 37.0% of his 3.2 attempts per game while putting up 18.5 points, 9.3 rebounds and 3.2 assists.
In 65 games, including 63 starts, he averaged 18.2 points, 9.0 rebounds, 3.6 assists and 1.7 blocks, with both the assists and blocks marking career highs. His 9.0 rebounds per game ranked ninth in the league, and he shot 54.6% from the field and 60.6% from the free-throw line while going 62-of-209 from deep.
Mobley’s season wasn’t without interruptions. A Grade 1 strain of his left calf cost him five games in December, and he strained it again in late January during a win over Orlando. That was also the night he blocked his 500th career shot, becoming the youngest Cavalier to reach that mark at 24.
He also missed out on award recognition last season, with no votes coming his way. His 65 games were the league minimum for eligibility.
Even so, Mobley’s playoff run showed more of the same steady two-way impact. Over 18 postseason games, he averaged 17.0 points, 8.1 rebounds, 3.9 assists and 1.8 blocks.
He had 19 points, eight rebounds and eight assists in Cleveland’s 117-113 overtime win at Detroit in Game 5 on May 13, then followed that with 21 points and 12 rebounds in the 125-94 Game 7 win there on May 17. In the Game 4 loss that ended the Knicks’ sweep, he finished with 15 points and seven rebounds.
The Cavaliers drafted Mobley third overall in 2021 out of USC, and he quickly established himself as one of the league’s premier defenders. He made the All-Defensive First Team in 2023 and finished third in Defensive Player of the Year voting that same year. A December 2023 arthroscopic knee surgery limited him to 50 games, which left him ineligible for awards.
Cleveland locked him in last July with a five-year, $224 million maximum rookie extension that could rise to $269 million with incentives. Mobley was the fourth player from the 2021 draft class to land a max extension, following Cade Cunningham, Scottie Barnes and Franz Wagner. When the deal was announced, Cavaliers president of basketball operations Koby Altman said Cleveland had "only scratched the surface of his overall potential."
Mobley turned 25 on June 18, and the extension runs through the 2029-30 season.
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Kenny Atkinson Just Put Clevelands Expectations Under A Brighter Spotlight
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Atkinsons spot on that list reflects the larger challenge in front of him: guiding a team with real ambitions while balancing star power, inevitable roster turnover, and the constant demand to keep the season pointed toward the playoffs. For Cleveland, the attention is another sign that the conversation has moved beyond progress and into results, where the pressure only grows once the chase shifts from improvement to expectation. [Read more 🡒]