The poet Hanif Abdurraqib opens There’s Always This Year – his 2024 volume on the Cleveland Cavaliers, basketball and Ohio – with a meditation on the shared pain of Cavs fans before the arrival of LeBron James, and the unfettered joy he delivered with the 2016 NBA championship:
You are putting your hand into my open palm, and I am resting my one free hand atop yours, and I would like to commiserate here and now, about our enemies.
The enemies Abdurraqib speaks of are all who refuse to share in Cavs fans’ lament: a lifetime steeped in winless pain. The 2016 chip brought salvation, a religious nomenclature Abdurraqib uses throughout his memoir on the Cavs. When LeBron departed for Los Angeles in 2018, it felt like Cleveland had been cast back to the beginning of a parable. This season, they own the best record in the NBA and are back in championship contention. This iteration doesn’t have the best overall player of all time, LeBron, as their heliocentric savior. Instead, they have a talented, cohesive team of two-way players and, entering Wednesday night’s game at Miami, a 37-9 record. As they return to the class of true contenders, it begs a more vital question: can they really win it all?
For Cavs fans, losing has been a central part of the experience. Founded in 1970, the organization has been around for 54 years with the lone championship to their credit. It took 46 years to get there. So what now? For one, the pressure to finally win the first one is extinguished, thanks to LeBron fulfilling his prodigal son destiny. This year’s Cavs are a young roster with an average age of 26.9 years, suggesting a four- to five-year window to win another. They’ve already generated strong playoff experience, too, having reached the postseason the past two years with a conference semi-finals appearance in 2024. This makes it all the more impressive that they could potentially win 70 games while playing two traditional bigs in the frontcourt and an undersized backcourt, which is antithetical to where the NBA is trending. Abdurraqib defines his fandom as having “spent enough time aligned with both religion and sports to know there is no gospel richer than the gospel of suffering”; this religious verbiage conjures images of The Decision, pale faces burning James jerseys in 2010, “We Are All Witnesses” white-washed off walls, Cavs owner Dan Gilbert’s letter, Anthony Bennett’s squander, Kyrie Irving’s exodus, followed by LeBron’s (again). Only Egypt has seen more plagues.
This season, the Cavs have become a juggernaut in East, running out to the best record and top offensive rating (121.3) while second in net rating (9.1). In the age of advanced analytics, they lead in categories like assist-to-turnover ratio (2.22), effective field-goal percentage (58.7) and true shooting perfcentage (61.6). The offense has been torrid from jump, led by the backcourt of Donovan Mitchell and Darius Garand, the frontcourt of Evan Mobley and Jarrett Allen, and the tutelage of first-year head coach Kenny Atkinson. Unlike the championship that was won squarely on the back of LeBron’s greatness, this Cavs team is just that: a team. They’re one of the finest exemplars of the modern pace-and-space era, currently fifth in three-point attempts per game (41) and second in makes (16.3), good for a league-best 39.8% from the perimeter. They rarely go five-out – what’s become a staple of present-day basketball – relying on a 10-man rotation with an arsenal of three-and-D players like Max Strus, Dean Wade, Isaac Okoro, Georges Niang and NBA sixth man of the year candidate Caris LeVert.
How did this particular Cavs team form? After LeBron’s post-championship departure in 2018, the Cavs missed the playoffs four years in a row. However, they didn’t let a decade-long “rebuild” gestate. They drafted to compete sooner rather than later. In 2019, they used the fifth overall pick on Garland, targeting him as their point guard of the future, just as they’d previously done with Kyrie Irving in 2011. Then they selected Mobley with the third pick in 2021. And. Here. We. Go.
It’s a new day in Ohio. While this roster is stacked with four potential All-Stars, there is no obviously MVP candidate, much less a LeBron, in the starting lineup. Mitchell is the closest thing to it. Acquired for a king’s ransom from the Utah Jazz in 2022, the current All-Star starter isn’t even having his best season. Here’s where the critics have a point. Every team that has won a championship in the modern era, including the Cavs in 2016, has had a generational superstar on their roster. Cavs supporters will counter that this team mirrors the 2004 Detroit Pistons, a group of All-Star level players playing team basketball, with a different weapon capable of going off from game to game.
There’s also an argument this team better resembles the 2014-15 Atlanta Hawks. In 2015, the Hawks had four All-Stars (Al Horford, Paul Millsap, Jeff Teague and Kyle Korver) and won their first division title since 1994. Their franchise-best 60–22 record secured the East’s top seed and home-court advantage, culminating in their first conference finals appearance of the two-conference era. Ironically, once they ran into the LeBron-led Cavs, they were smacked with a sweep, showing the importance of having a superstar to rely on deep into the playoffs. Which raises the question again: without a superstar, can Cleveland really win it all? The answer is yes, with an asterisk. To do so, Mobley must grow into the superstar he can become.
While Mitchell is Cleveland’s best offensive player, Mobley has the highest ceiling. Behind Mitchell as their first option, the Cavs have seemed not to be able to get over the playoff hump on the back of their star shooting guard. In Mobley, the fourth-year power forward has two-way All-NBA potential. The league’s Defensive Player of the Month for December, he played a key role in the Cavaliers achieving the East’s top defensive rating (106.2) and the NBA’s best point differential (+15.1) during that stretch. But his evolving offense should scare the league for what’s to come.
Mobley is averaging career-highs in points (18.3), EFG% (.616), OBPM (2.7), WS48 (.194) and most importantly for his evolution, shooting 41.3% from three. His new-found shooting has opened up his game, which will only expand with more volume. He has mastered the dribble hand-off, using his explosive first step and athleticism to seamlessly switch between efficiently driving to the rim or pulling up for a three. The Cavaliers thrive in these situations, scoring at the second-highest rate in the NBA on handoffs. They also rank fourth in both effective field goal percentage and points per possession, making this action a cornerstone of their offensive success.
Mobley becoming the best offensive player on the Cavs is the key to this season not being a one-trick pony like the 2015 Hawks, who never returned to the conference finals as a group. Mobley has all the tools and work ethic to take his offensive game to the next level. He is already averaging career-high isolation attempts (13.7 FREQ%) and PPP (.89), showing a willingness to put the offense on his back and being amazing when he does. The Cavs will need him to continue on this path, especially as he plays more minutes at center, surrounded by shooters and off-ball cutters. If the Cavs want to be more than regular-season contenders, Mobley needs to evolve into the team’s first option on offense. It shifts them from over-relying on an under-sized backcourt to a 6ft 11in demon with a tight handle, pull-up three-point shot and playmaking chops in the short roll, all the qualities of the modern star. This season, Mobley has showcased his ability to initiate offense, grab defensive rebounds, push the ball up the court with his left hand, and finish plays with emphatic dunks – sequences that underscore his rare combination of speed, skill, and aggression.
In his first season as head coach, Atkinson made good on the organization’s directive to center Mobley in the offense. The Cavs often run their offense through Mobley instead of shoving him in the corner as previous coach Bernie Bickerstaff did. Atkinson is not just unleashing Mobley offensively. He’s ensuring it happens with the team that drafted him, ensuring long-term, sustainable winning: a mantra few teams actualize. It helps Atkinson has built-in chemistry with LeVert and Allen, as the trio was the feel-good Brooklyn Nets team before the 2019 free agency period broke them apart. This season feels like a benediction to back-to-back LeBron eras.
Fortune has favored them with an easy path through the season’s early stretch. Yet we all know the true crucible waits in May … and possibly beyond. But as Cavs fans learned in 2016, miracles can happen. Even Abdurraqib, in his quiet confessional, reveals himself as a dreamer at heart: “I’m not especially easy to fool, but I am a romantic, which I suppose means at the right hour, I’m everybody’s fool.” Perhaps the Cavaliers’ quiet revolution is not about returning to glory, but proving that the gospel of suffering can yield something sweeter: a team forged in faith, rising not on the back of a savior but as one body, bound by the romance of belief.
