The Cleveland Cavaliers came into this season with big expectations - and for good reason. After finishing atop the Eastern Conference last year, the hope was that 2025-26 would be their breakthrough.
Instead, as we hit the midpoint of the season, they’re sitting at 24-20 and clinging to the seventh seed. Not disastrous, but certainly not where a team with championship aspirations expected to be.
The East is tight - just a couple of games separate the Cavs from the top six - but that doesn’t erase the inconsistency we’ve seen. Remember Christmas Day?
Cleveland coughed up a 20-point fourth-quarter lead to the Knicks in front of a national audience. Moments like that don’t just sting - they raise real questions about whether this team is built to close when it counts.
One player at the center of those conversations: Evan Mobley. And if you ask Kendrick Perkins, the 24-year-old Defensive Player of the Year is the key to unlocking whatever ceiling this Cavs team still has.
“When is he going to be powerful and stop being popular?” Perkins asked during a recent segment. “You take Giannis’ heart and Giannis’ motor, and you give it to Evan Mobley - dammit, we got Kevin Garnett.”
It’s vintage Perk - loud, dramatic, and tailor-made for social media. But peel back the theatrics, and there’s some real basketball substance there.
Mobley’s blend of size, mobility, and defensive instincts is rare. He’s already one of the league’s premier defenders, but the Cavs need more than just elite help-side rotations.
They need Mobley to impose his will.
That’s the piece Perkins is getting at. Mobley doesn’t need to morph into a full-blown superstar overnight, but he does need to assert himself more consistently.
Too often, he drifts - on offense, in particular - and the Cavs can’t afford that. Not with the East as deep and dangerous as it is.
Not with teams like the Pacers, who bounced Cleveland from the playoffs last spring, continuing to surge.
Perkins went as far as to call Mobley “the most important player on their team if they’re trying to go to the NBA Finals and win a championship.” Now, some might argue that title belongs to Donovan Mitchell, and that’s fair - Mitchell is the Cavs’ offensive engine.
But the point stands: Mobley is the swing factor. He’s the guy who can elevate Cleveland from “good” to “dangerous.”
And that means more than just blocking shots or switching onto guards. It means crashing the glass like every rebound matters.
It means finishing with force around the rim. It means being the tone-setter - the guy who shows up every night and makes life miserable for whoever’s wearing the other jersey.
Cleveland doesn’t need Mobley to be Giannis. They don’t need him to be Garnett.
But they do need him to stop playing like a passenger. Because right now, potential doesn’t win playoff series.
Production does.
If Mobley finds that gear - the one where he’s not just defending but dictating - the Cavs still have time to turn this season around. But if not, they risk becoming just another team with talent, left wondering why it never quite came together when it mattered most.