Frustration with Evan Mobley and Darius Garland’s stalled development is reaching beyond the Cavs locker room

CLEVELAND, Ohio — When the Cavs acquired Donovan Mitchell in the summer of 2022, the organization’s championship blueprint seemed clear: Mitchell would be the established star while Evan Mobley and Darius Garland would develop into elite co-stars, creating a legitimate challenge for NBA supremacy.

That plan is now being seriously questioned by NBA analysts who see Mobley and Garland’s development plateauing rather than accelerating — a critical issue for a team with championship aspirations.

“The scoring leap should be better, right? Like in theory, he should be a better scorer by now,” Joel Lorenzi of The Athletic said of Mobley on the Wine and Gold Talk podcast. “People have real beef with him as a scorer and his potential there and why he hasn’t realized it.”

Lorenzi’s assessment of Mobley’s stalled offensive development cuts to the heart of Cleveland’s current struggles.

The former third overall pick was supposed to be the ceiling-raiser who would eventually surpass Mitchell as the team’s franchise cornerstone. Instead, his offensive game remains frustratingly incomplete.

Using a gaming analogy that resonates with many basketball fans, Lorenzi explained: “By now, in the Cavs idyllic world, Mobley should have been a 94 overall by now instead of an 87 or 86. Like that’s just what it should have been. And that would have made this thing work and made the margin for error bigger. And it’s just not.”

That “margin for error” concept is crucial to understanding Cleveland’s disappointment.

Championship-level teams can withstand injuries, shooting slumps, and defensive lapses because their star players provide enough cushion through elite production. The Cavs simply don’t have that luxury when Mobley isn’t dominating games.

Compounding matters is Darius Garland’s regression from his All-Star form of two seasons ago.

As Lorenzi noted, “And while we’re trying to make the parallels, it does not help that Darius Garland has seemingly taken a step back … now that you’re seeing this sort of these drawbacks with Darius Garland as an offensive player that he’s not realizing his potential as an offensive player, it’s just even more problematic.”

Ethan Sands, host of the Wine and Gold Talk podcast, put Garland’s situation in even starker terms: “If Darius Garland isn’t playing to an All-Star caliber offensively, he’s a liability on both ends of the floor.”

Cleveland.com columnist Jimmy Watkins highlighted how the team’s developmental timeline has been accelerated compared to other young cores around the league: “Evan Mobley has been asked to grow up a little bit faster than the Thunder have needed Chet [Holmgren] to grow up. And that’s in part because Shai’s Shai and Donovan’s not quite Shai.”

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That accelerated timeline has created an awkward dynamic where Mitchell was supposed to be “a caretaker of the franchise until Evan Mobley was ready,” according to Watkins. But Mobley’s development hasn’t proceeded as planned, creating an identity crisis for a team that’s no longer sure who its future centerpiece will be.

The psychological aspect of this development issue shouldn’t be overlooked.

Watkins suggests the team may be “tiptoeing around” Mobley after disappointing performances, raising questions about whether the organization’s cautious approach with their young star is hindering rather than helping his growth.

As the Cavaliers navigate this challenging season, the organization faces a difficult question: Will Mobley and Garland eventually reach their projected ceilings, or has Cleveland already seen the best these young players have to offer? The answer will determine whether the Cavs’ current core has any chance of championship contention.

Here’s the podcast for this week: