Has Evan Mobley already reached his ceiling?

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A little positive news before tonight's game there, JP.

Yeah, what do we got?

Jared Allen. It's been upgraded to probable with knee ten tonight.

It's so it looks like Brian Winhorse was right the many times he said it.

All right.

Looks like we could be getting Jared Allen back tonight.

Oh, I'll take probable.

It's better than ruled out.

They can still pull the rug from you, though.

This is the cast.

I just started laying information about it.

I don't want to do like the celebrating thing of like, all right.

Hell yeah, let's get Allen back and let's start doing this when I know what the calves can do

with injuries.

And so I'm just going to remain cautious.

So we played Kevin O'Connor and his is takedown on Evan Mobley in the previous segment.

And again, it was from the Kevin O'Connor show.

If you'd like to hear somebody just completely crap on a player, maybe one of your favorite players,

I would go listen to that entire episode.

Oh, when you put it that way, I just it's so funny.

Like everybody, you know, when he was going to his third years, expect a big jump.

And then it was going to his fourth year.

And now it's this.

And like, I'm not here to tell you that there hasn't been a aggression at three point or that Evan,

honestly, Evan just might not be the best player in a championship team.

All of these things are up for it.

But I think going any farther than that, it's like, I've really only seen

them in this context, like in the in the whole point of training for James Harden, it was,

well, can we say we really gave Donovan Mitchell a real chance to do something here when he's

been stuck with two bigs that might overlap each other and another undersized guard.

Well, when I think part of the James Harden trade and the thinking is the calves telling you that

if the if the expectation going into the year and we did battles on this was,

can Evan Mobley be the better player by the time you get to the postseason than Donovan?

Caves are telling you they didn't buy that and the calves within that trade are,

they put a lot more into Donovan than they are the idea that Mobley even three,

four years from now will be the guy that will elevate this team by himself somewhere.

Yeah, listen, I think we're going a little too, a step too far there.

I think this could be one of the things that you do to try and make Donovan better,

while understanding at some point you are going to have to pivot to Evan,

Evan, even if it means there's a step back there.

And I know that's, I'm early on that conversation.

We're not ready to have that conversation.

And if we have that conversation,

people are going to take it to mean it's time to trade Donovan Mitchell.

That's where we're going to be maybe this summer or maybe next summer.

We'll see.

But for now, like Donovan's been mired in the same situation one way or another.

All right, sorry, Evan has been mired in the same situation.

I haven't given up on those long term hopes for Evan Mobley

because I still think he's incredibly young and he's an incredibly gifted player.

Well, the sad part about it is that there are definitely games where you're like,

this, this is everything you've ever want from him.

Like the, again, the back-to-back games he played,

but four, four games ago now, I've referenced a million times.

We had 19 attempts and then 21 attempts, but it wasn't just the attempts.

It was the idea that he was aggressive and that he was doing everything you'd want

from a basketball sense.

You know it's in there, it's just then you have these other games.

And they just, he's not the same guy and he just disappears for long, long stretches.

And it's just, how do I get him to be the first version more consistently?

You build the team around him.

That's what you, I mean, that's what they do around every player in the NBA.

And maybe the Cavs don't feel like he's that kind of guy.

But I mean, I think that's what the Lakers are going through with Luca.

That's certainly what the Cavs are trying to do at least right now with Donovan Mitchell.

Like, I just, you know, Kevin O'Connor had the line that, you know, those reps have to be earned.

It's like, well, most young players that are top three picks, top five picks, top 10 picks,

earn them by virtue of their draft selection.

Right?

Hey, you're on a bad team.

We took you three.

We'd like to be right about you.

We're going to make sure we do everything to make you right.

The Cavs made the right choice to try and get this team as good as they could in short order.

But the, the offset of that is you never gave Evan the same kind of runway.

A lot of, a lot of really good prospects on really bad teams get.

And I think too many people,

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Wherever you get your podcasts or dismissing that and just going straight to Evan

mobility sucks, which I think is just, I think it's, I think it's absurd.

I think if this is as bad or sorry, this is all he is.

He's still on top 25 plays.

Yeah, saying he sucks is a lot.

That's, that's a, that's a heavy hand.

It's more just questioning whether or not he can be the guy that you once thought would take

over for Donovan and be the better player than Donovan.

And I think that's, that's where the Cavs are in an imbalance right now.

He's trying to figure out you know, he's good.

But is he going to always, is he going to be the guy that can be a Batman one day

or is he always going to be in that Robin roll?

Rell.

Rell, welcome to the show, buddy.

What you got for us?

Okay.

Hello, Rell.

Yeah.

I disagree.

Now is the one when Fedor called him, uh, Albert, the debugger instead.

Rell, you there, buddy?

Yeah, I'm here.

Yeah, yeah.

What's up Nick?

What's up JP?

That's not funny.

What you got for us?

Listen, man, I didn't hear the, I didn't hear the conversation

or what a guy was, was jumping on Evan.

But I mean, I'm not going to say he's soft, but I'm not going to say he's overrated

because I jumped off the, I jumped off the train by Evan Moby two years ago.

I've been telling people for the longest.

Maybe not you guys, but my friends, you know, Evan is just not who we thought he was.

And if people are going to use the word overrated and all of that,

I kind of blame y'all, man.

I kind of blame the Cleveland media because we're Evan first out here.

It was he's a unicorn and he's this, he's that.

And I believe it because he does have the size.

He has good ability and you're right.

He is gifted, but he just, it don't take a player five years to show you

that he's that blue.

It just don't take that long.

And y'all know sports, y'all talk sports all day long.

So y'all got to know B ball.

It don't take that long to see five years to see if this dude really is that guy.

And I've been telling people for the last two years

that Evan mobility is just not that guy.

And I'll end it on this.

If he took that 17 up to 25 points of game,

you can lock the Cavaliers in, at least the final finals then set 100%.

He's just not going to give you that.

And I'm sorry, I'm not going to say he saw,

but I gave up more Evan mobility two years ago, y'all.

All right.

Do you have any friends that we can, oh, he hung up.

I was going to see if his friends would corroborate that he was on this.

Yeah, it feels, you know,

oh, I was out two years ago.

Donovan Mitchell averages 20 field goal attempts right now per game.

Evan's about 13.

So if you gave Evan another four attempts per game,

just split the difference here.

You had to be right about where people wanted to be scoring lights.

If he, honestly, if he just made his free throws,

he'd also be right where people want him to be.

No, for sure.

I think one of the issues is that he's got the same field goal attempts

that he had his rookie year in year five.

And it's like, like, you got to give him a chance to,

to, I don't know, score a little bit more,

to be that guy a little bit more.

And so like it's just an, it's an odd thing.

You just don't see it.

Like, like, the reason why everyone's so excited

after year two of Evan mobility was that when you're averaging 17 and 10,

and year two, and you're shooting, you know, 50 something percent,

56% of, you know, effective field goal percentage,

like, you're expecting those things to then raise and get better and better

the way that it typically does in the NBA.

You know, year two, you just watch these guys just grow and bigger and bigger

and better and better.

And the thing with mobile is that it's just been flatlined.

It doesn't mean he's a bad player.

It's just, it's the same numbers, the exact same numbers in year two

that he has right now.

No, it's averaging 18 points per game.

Sorry, you're right.

One is 18 a game, one is 17 a game,

but it's 18 and 10 and then 17 and 10.

It's like, it's the, it's the basically same everything.

And like, down to year two is what I said.

16 points per game, and now it's 18 points per game.

Okay, so we have a two point to game difference.

It did, yeah, it's essentially the same thing.

But if you're looking at like the two point attempts,

he's down, he was 10.7 per game.

Now he's down to 9.8, he's dropped in that category.

Like the effective field go percentage

has raised a slight tick from 56 to 57% like across the board.

These numbers are almost as identical as you can possibly get.

And I think that's what's frustrating to fans.

It's like, after year two, there was very, very strong reason to think.

You would just continue to climb and climb and climb.

And it's just remained flatlined.

It doesn't mean he's a bad player by any stretch of it.

That's still a really good player.

It's just not typical to how we see this typically go.

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