Think of the best starts in NBA history. They tend to look pretty similar. The Golden State Warriors kicked off the 2015-16 season with 24 consecutive wins, They were a defending champion with an MVP hitting his prime in Stephen Curry. The 1995-96 Chicago Bulls kicked off their season with a 41-3 stretch. They had Michael Jordan and Scottie Pippen.
Most of the time, we’re talking about teams with championship track records and legendary players. Often, those starts follow the acquisition of a major new piece. The 2003-04 Lakers started 18-3 after adding Gary Payton and Karl Malone to Kobe Bryant and Shaquille O’Neal. When the 2016-17 Warriors added Kevin Durant, they lost on opening night and then lost only two more regulation games before Christmas. The story was similar for the 2019-20 Lakers. They lost on opening night and then won 24 of their next 26 with Anthony Davis alongside LeBron James. Most of the teams that start out this well recently added Hall of Famers, and the rest already had them.
That’s what makes what’s happening in Cleveland right now so unique. Donovan Mitchell is the only player on the Cavaliers roster to ever make an All-NBA Team. He’s only done so once, and it was a Second-Team pick, not a First-Team selection. They didn’t add a notable player this offseason. In fact, they barely added anyone. They have played 3,600 minutes so far this season. They have thus far allocated 3,563 of those minutes to players who were on their roster last season. The remaining 37 have gone to Jaylon Tyson, a first-round rookie that has played 26 minutes, Luke Travers, a two-way player from Australia who had previously been on their Summer League team that has played nine minutes, and their lone veteran free-agent addition of the offseason, JT Thor, who has played two minutes. This is more or less the same group of players that went 48-34 a season ago. To win only 48 games this season, Cleveland would have to play sub-.500 basketball the rest of the way.
The notable change here came on the bench. Kenny Atkinson replaced JB Bickerstaff as Cleveland’s head coach, and suddenly, the Cavaliers are unbeatable. The question here is why? What has Kenny Atkinson done to take a good team and make it perfect? Why exactly are the 15-0 Cavaliers so dominant?
Now seems like a perfect opportunity to answer that question because the Cavaliers are about to face the biggest test of their young season. On Tuesday, they will travel to Boston to face the defending champs. Cavaliers vs. Celtics has become one of the biggest November NBA games in recent memory. While it would be unfair to draw meaningful conclusions from a single game, this game does represent a great opportunity for Cleveland to measure itself against the best of the best. We’ll have a much cleaner idea of how real the Cavaliers are after they’ve faced off with the Celtics, so in preparation for that heavyweight clash, let’s dive into what has made this Cleveland team so special thus far this season.
So… why are the Cavaliers winning so much?
Well, for starters, it’s really hard to find a weakness here. They’re technically below average in rebound rate, but that’s due to a conscious choice to eschew offensive rebounding. They rank eighth in defense rebounding rate. They’re generating 2.7 more turnovers on defense than they’re giving up on offense, and they’re taking one more free throw per game on average than their opponents. They’re borderline invincible late in games thus far with a staggering plus-70.8 clutch net rating and a 7-0 clutch record. You have to look hard to find flaws here. They’re just about as good as they’ve ever been at the things that were already going well, and they’ve improved significantly in the areas that weren’t. There’s no simpler way to explain that than through their offense and defense.
The Cavaliers of the past few seasons were a defense-first team that tried just about everything to jumpstart a sluggish offense. Since drafting Evan Mobley, they have ranked fifth, first and seventh in defense. Right now, they again rank seventh. The difference is that unlike in the past, the offense is dominant. The Cavaliers currently have the best offensive rating in the NBA at 122.1, which would represent the second-best figure over a full season in league history behind last year’s Celtics.
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How is their offense this good?
If we were to distill it down to a single word, that word would be balance. No Cavalier plays more than 31.1 minutes per game, and none of them rank in the top 60 in the NBA in terms of touches per game, according to NBA.com tracking data. Is some of that due to blowouts getting their best players off of the floor early? Sure… but as of this writing, two-way wing Brandon Boston Jr. of the Pelicans is touching the ball more than any Cavalier. Amongst the top three Cavaliers, though, the distribution is remarkably even. Darius Garland, Donovan Mitchell and Evan Mobley all touch the ball between 61.1 and 57.9 times per game. That represents meaningful sacrifice on Mitchell’s part. He was above 79 touches per game a season ago. Now? He’s taking his fewest shots per game since his rookie season.
That communal mindset has unlocked Garland and Mobley. Mobley is averaging a career-high 18.1 points per game. Garland’s volume numbers haven’t jumped, but his efficiency has skyrocketed. He’s making 58.2% of his 2-pointers, seven percentage points above any other season in his career, and 45.5% of his 3-pointers, six percentage points above his previous high. Life is easier for all three of them because they’re all pulling their weight. The offense is remarkably egalitarian, but not necessarily in the ways you’d expect.
Cleveland plays fast. The Cavaliers rank seventh in overall pace and fourth in offensive pace. Yet for a team based on balance and speed, there isn’t a lot of ball-movement. Only the Mavericks and Rockets make fewer passes per game than the Cavaliers do. That doesn’t necessarily match the eye test, and it conflicts with the offensive principles Atkinson brought from his previous stop in Golden State. The Warriors lead the NBA in passes almost every year. Yet despite that low passing volume, only four teams are generating more points off of assists per game. The Cavaliers rank near the middle of the pack in both potential assists and secondary assists. How are they doing this on a such a low number of total passes?
It’s because the passes they do make are crisp and decisive. Cleveland doesn’t pass much because the bulk of its offensive setup is happening in two places. Cleveland’s speed is most evident off of the ball. NBA.com tracking data shows that the average Cleveland offensive player moves faster than the average player on all but six other teams.
That movement is designed to maximize what is happening on the ball. Only the Thunder, the Grizzlies and the Trail Blazers drive more times per game than the Cavaliers do. Here’s the catch: none of them are shooting better than 50.1% on drive shots. The Cavaliers are at a preposterous 57.5%, a figure that comfortably breaks the tracking era record. Speaking of tracking-era records: Cleveland is generating 7.9 assists per game out of drives. This is drive-and-kick basketball at its finest. Cleveland ranks fourth in the NBA in points in the paint, but is also lapping the field in terms of 3-point percentage. They’re making 41.9% of their triples. Nobody else is making more than 39%. Garland, Mitchell and Mobley break down the defense and create shots at the rim. If defenses overcommit to stopping them, Cleveland’s array of shooters kills them for it.
Growth from Mobley has been an enormous part of what has made this possible. The simplistic view on fixing Cleveland’s offense, for years, was for Mobley to develop into a shooter. If that happens? Great. But Atkinson didn’t bet on it. Instead, he took a page out of the Golden State playbook he spent the past three years studying and empowered him as a ball-handler in the vein of Draymond Green. While Green handles to pass, Mobley does so much more to score.
Notably, Cleveland has been dogmatic about allowing Mobley to bring the ball up when he pulls in a rebound on defense. Taking the extra pass to a guard out of the equation has sped Cleveland up drastically in transition and made it far harder for defenses to get set. Adding to the confusion? Cleveland will frequently run inverted pick-and-rolls with Mobley as the handler and a smaller shooter as the screener. This panics defenses because there’s no obvious fix for it. Switch and Mobley gets to barrel through a small guard while a big is forced to chase a shooter. There’s no obvious way to help either. You can’t pull a defender off of Jarrett Allen in the dunker’s spot, he’s one of the NBA’s best lob-catchers. By putting the ball in Mobley’s hands, you’ve removed the second non-shooter from the equation. Now, help from anywhere else leaves a deep threat alone. This approach gives Mobley runway going downhill, and the strength he’s added across three seasons in an NBA weight room has made him a far more comfortable finisher. He’s taking a career-high 7.2 shots per game in the restricted area and making 74.3% of them.
The Garland side of the equation is simpler. He’s making everything. Only an immaculately executed switch or a risky blitz is going to do much to slow down a 42.3% pull-up shooter from deep. While he’s not using his floater quite as often as he has in the past, he’s making almost 70% of his shots from floater range, so good luck playing drop-coverage. Don’t even think about helping off of him when Mitchell or Mobley get their turns at the helm of the offense. He’s making 49% of his catch-and-shoot 3s. Shockingly, making all of your shots unlocks quite a bit of other things on offense. Defenses are so keyed in on him that he can find open looks for teammates whenever he wants them. He’s getting seven assists per game off of around 40 total passes. Ben Simmons averages an identical seven assists per game, but on 54.2 passes.
And Mitchell? Well, he seems quite content to let Garland and Mobley cook seeing as how he’s making 53.5% of his catch-and-shoot 3s. That’s the single area that best explains Cleveland’s stellar offense. Cleveland generally runs a 10-man rotation, but half of the players they use consistently are making at least 40% of those catch-and-shoot looks. That doesn’t even include Sam Merrill, the best shooter on the team. No one on the entire roster, at any volume, is below Georges Niang’s 36.2%. Those 3s are available because Mitchell, Garland and Mobley are creating them, but Cleveland’s offense is historic because everyone is making them. Good offenses either make 3s or score at the rim. Great offenses do both. The two traits amplify one another, and no team is proving that more than the Cavaliers this season.
So that’s Cleveland’s offense, but what about the defense?
As good as ever would probably be a stretch considering Cleveland ranked No. 1 as recently as 2023… but the Cavaliers aren’t far off here, either. The general principle of their defense remains the same. The guards are the weakness, and they do allow a reasonable amount of dribble-penetration. Cleveland allows the 12th-most restricted area shots per game, but opponents make only 61.7% of them, the sixth-lowest mark in the league, because the double-barreled rim-protection of Allen and Mobley is so strong.
Even great rim-protecting defenses tend to make sacrifices elsewhere, but Cleveland largely doesn’t. The Cavs almost never foul, yet they still generate the eighth-most turnovers per game in the league. Generally speaking, an aggressive defense fouls quite a bit. Oklahoma City is the poster child here. The Thunder are probably going to set the stocks record, but they allow the fourth-most free-throw attempts in the NBA because they play aggressively enough to create those steals and blocks. Cleveland is so stout at the rim that the perimeter players can chase turnovers without giving away free points. Preventing the easy stuff is the name of the game here. Remember those offensive rebounds the Cavaliers don’t get? The tradeoff for that is one of the league’s better transition defenses.
Garland and Mitchell are what they are defensively. Their job is to run the offense. They’re small guards with inherent limitations, but they compete and buy into the system, executing their role as turnover generators well. They combine to deflect 4.7 passes per game, a reasonably strong number for players of their size. The other smaller guard playing a big role here, Ty Jerome, does the same thing but better. In 17.5 minutes, he’s deflecting 2.5 passes per game. On a per-minute basis, that’s the same number of deflections as more heralded defenders like Gary Payton II, Marcus Smart and Cason Wallace.
The bulk of the perimeter defense is done by bigger wings like Dean Wade and Isaac Okoro. “Wing” might not do justice to Wade. He’ll defend anyone. Case in point: the player who has taken the most shots against him as a primary defender this season is Damian Lillard. In second place? Giannis Antetokounmpo. Typically Wade defends bigger forwards whereas Okoro is better suited to chasing smaller guards. The two of them, with Mobley, gives Cleveland deceptive switchability in defensive lineups.
The defense isn’t as flashy as the offense, but unless you’re generating turnovers like Oklahoma City, it rarely is. In Cleveland’s case, it’s an insurance policy against the inevitable ebbs and flows of being a great offensive team. Sometimes your 3s don’t go in, but you can always win games on defense. Cleveland is no one-trick pony.
Is this real? What about all of those trade rumors?
Well, what does “real” mean to you? I can promise you that Cleveland isn’t going to hover around 42% from 3-point range for the year. Only one team has made a greater percentage of their 3-pointers than Cleveland currently is over a full season, the 1996-97 Charlotte Hornets, and that team was using a shortened 3-point line and took less than half as many triples as the Cavs are. Ty Jerome isn’t going to make half of his 3s. Caris LeVert and Isaac Okoro probably won’t hang in the mid-40s. Yes, there is some regression coming here.
But if “real” means “a real threat to win the NBA championship,” then the answer is almost certainly yes even despite the realities that fueled those trade rumors. It is really hard to build a championship-caliber defense with two small guards. It is really hard to build a championship-caliber offense with two big men who don’t shoot 3s. Both of those things remain true, and they will be amplified with playoff-caliber game-planning and opposition.
If it turns out that winning a championship with those limitations is impossible, well, that’s out of Cleveland’s control. But what Cleveland has done thus far this season is prove that they have at the very least built the best possible version of their own team, that they have found ways to mitigate those weaknesses as much as reasonably possible. They’ve redesigned their offense in a way that limits the impact Mobley and Allen’s joint presence on the floor can have. They’ve always had a defense designed to at least make top opponents work for their points.
They’ve played Boston as well as anyone in recent years. They are 4-3 in the regular season against Joe Mazzulla-coached Celtics teams heading into Tuesday’s heavyweight bout. They lost in five games last postseason, but Cleveland was dealing with a rash of injuries at the time. Boston is the Eastern Conference favorite. That will be true no matter what happens on Tuesday. But this game is a chance for the Cavaliers to prove that what they’ve built can stand up to the best of the best. If the first 15 games are any indication, they are going to pass that test.
