Last Updated on June 12, 2026 11:27 am by Mike Passador | Published: June 12, 2026

The Cavs fancied themselves title contenders even after last season’s dominance gave way to a second-round defeat. Another year with the same group, but in a more focused, motivated environment, was supposed to get the job done. It didn’t go quite according to plan, as Cleveland decided to swing big and shake up the roster core in hopes of raising the team’s ceiling.

How’d It Go?

Well, the Cavs didn’t win the title but they at least got through to the Eastern Conference Finals. They needed two seven-game series to do so — narrowly avoiding an embarrassing upset in the first and toppling the top seed in the second — before getting shredded by the Knicks. So it was progress, but nothing close to the team’s goals, and their goose egg against New York still left them with zero wins past the second round.

After they flamed out as the East’s top seed a year ago, the Cavs made marginal changes over the summer. They brought in Lonzo Ball to replace Ty Jerome as the backup point guard which wasn’t supposed to be a huge deal except for the fact that Darius Garland underwent offseason toe surgery. Max Strus suffered an offseason Jones fracture in his left foot so the Cavs were depleted in the backcourt a bit, but it wasn’t anything that they couldn’t handle given the quality of the remaining starters and solid depth.

The team looked out of sorts without a true lead guard to get the entire operation up and running and even when Garland did play, he was seeing limited minutes and did not look like his old self. Cleveland faltered in coasting to the finish in 2024-25 but they would have no such luxury this year, and their mediocre first chunk of the season was jarring given how the team vowed to play out the schedule with renewed focus and intensity after last season’s failings. The Cavs sputtered out of the gates a bit and actually sat 17-16 just after Christmas, though a month later they sat 28-20 after an inspired run of play. Still, the roster had clear holes. With Garland looking dicey and Ball looking completely washed up, the Cavs needed major backcourt help. Evan Mobley and Jarrett Allen weren’t playing poorly but they are the type of frontcourt players who benefit from a real playmaker calling the shots. Jaylon Tyson’s emergence was a huge bright spot but other than that, it was basically down to Donovan Mitchell putting together an All-NBA season.

Cleveland pushed their chips in at the deadline, first flipping De’Andre Hunter — who was roundly outplayed by Tyson and Sam Merrill — to the Kings for Keon Ellis and Dennis Schroder, solving their backcourt depth problems in the blink of an eye. Their biggest move was capitalizing on James Harden’s quick trade request when it became clear he wasn’t in the Clippers’ long-term plans, sending Garland west for the future Hall-of-Famer. It was a win-now move meant to shake up a stagnant roster and raise the ceiling of a team that had plenty of winning pieces in place. There were some growing pains but the Cavs got it together, going 24-10 over their final 34 games of the season.

That set them up for a first-round date with the Raptors and it looked like a blowout was brewing after two easy home wins to kick off the series. The Cavs got punched in the mouth in Toronto however, and the Raptors found a legitimate recipe to win games. Mitchell was bottled up after two great games to start the series, Harden was bleeding points with turnovers and Mobley and Allen faded into the background for long stretches of time. The Cavs were reliant on random step-up performances from their depth, as Strus, Merrill and Schroder all played key parts in victories while the star players came up short. Cleveland caught a couple breaks with Immanuel Quickley missing the entire series and Brandon Ingram exiting halfway through, taking Game 7 at home behind a monster performance from Allen, who was finally able to punish the Raptors’ lack of size. You’d think that a veteran team like this would take the wake-up call and learn from it, but they immediately dropped two games vs. the Pistons to start the next series and ended up in a seven-game battle. Mitchell and Mobley fared much better against Detroit’s defensive personnel and the Cavs delivered a Game 7 beatdown on the road to punch their ticket to the Conference Finals. It wasn’t pretty but they got the job done.

It looked like Cleveland was finally on the cusp of breaking through but they authored a horrendous collapse in Game 1 vs. the Knicks and were completely lifeless from there; it was as if the team collectively knew they had no chance if they couldn’t hold onto their Game 1 lead. It’s not that the Cavs lost to an excellent team — it’s the lack of fight they showed on the way out. For a team that planned on winning the championship, going out with a whimper was a brutal way to end the season. Cleveland made its big near-term future move in acquiring Harden but this group may be running out of kicks at the can. They hit a new frontier, but not the final one, and now have to give serious thought about the potential paths forward.

Coaching

On a veteran team like this, Kenny Atkinson’s responsibilities can be hard to suss out. He isn’t supposed to be a taskmaster and given the continuity levels here, plus Harden’s ability to play with just about anyone, the Cavs didn’t need to reinvent the wheel with their systems. The Cavs were sixth in offensive rating and a middling 15th on defense, grading out 9th in net rating overall. The team generally ranked somewhere between 8th and 15th in most of the metrics and it was hard to suss out exactly what they wanted to be. Cleveland took a lot of 3-pointers but wasn’t a run-and-gun team. They didn’t dominate the glass or focus on the possession game in terms of turnovers or taking care of the ball. They weren’t even particularly iso-heavy in the regular season, though perhaps Harden’s presence changed things. The Cavs had 34.7 percent of their field goals come unassisted in the regular season, 20th in the league. In the playoffs that ballooned to 42.1 percent, slotting third behind the Suns (who only had four games) and the Sixers. The degree to which things became a slog as soon as the top option was taken away was striking.

The playoffs weren’t necessarily kind to Atkinson. He was outmaneuvered by Darko Rajakovic a few times as the Cavs had ample opportunity to punish the an imbalanced Raptors roster, and yet they were pushed to the brink. The turnovers were a persistent problem and it was rare that anyone seemed to treat poor performance with any kind of urgency. The Cavs got through Detroit but it was a rock fight, with the team scoring 97, 94 and 101 points in their three losses. Even after the first couple of games against the Knicks, Atkinson’s forced positivity read more like delusion about where the team really stood. It was a shocking stance for a team with this level of expectation to take and at no point did it feel like Atkinson was going to snap them out of their funk. There were some games where the Cavs looked liked dynamite, but games where they got trounced were just as abundant. And when the Cavs looked bad, they looked awful. For a team with so many players who had been in these situations before, it was puzzling to see how inconsistent they could be night-to-night.

Atkinson can clearly guide this team through the regular season but there was not much different about the operation in the postseason even when the team needed some life. Staying calm and cool in the face of pressure is generally a good thing, but the Cavs followed Atkinson’s lead to their detriment. He’ll be back behind the bench again next season but that seat is getting pretty hot. This team has too many good players to go out like that.

The Players

Donovan Mitchell

SG, Cleveland Cavaliers

ADP: 18.6 / 23.1 (Yahoo/ESPN) | Total Value: 10/9 (8/9-cat) | Per-Game Value: 7/7 (8/9-cat)

Mitchell is an early-round metronome in fantasy. His stat lines over the last five years feature very few major deviations, and generally when the numbers change they’re moving in the right direction as a whole. This season saw Mitchell take a step forward in points, assists, steals, field goal percentage and free throw percentage. The points were Mitchell’s most notable improvement and that was driven by a mark from the field that fell just shy of matching his previous career-high. He’s the go-to guy for a strong Cavs team and while there is plenty of talent to be found on this roster, at the end of the day it’s Mitchell who gets the crunch-time work. The midseason arrival of James Harden predictably led to a slight step back for Mitchell, but it was only to top-20 levels. Most of that decline wasn’t even driven by Harden-related things at first glance; Mitchell lost about an assist per game but a decrease of about four points had more to do with Mitchell shooting .315 from deep compared to .376 before the All-Star break. That resulted in 1.5 fewer 3-pointers per contest, which is basically the entire difference in scoring. It’s possible that Mitchell’s efficiency suffered because of the type of shots he was getting alongside Harden but there is no world in which he would shoot that poorly for any major length of time, and the fact that those statistical declines weren’t enough to knock him out of the top-20 just speaks to how good he was for the bulk of the season.

The playoffs were a bit more up and down, especially in the first round. Mitchell was great in the first two games of the series but really struggled to get going from there against the Raptors’ strong set of perimeter defenders. He averaged 20.0 points per game on .388 shooting over the final five games of that series and found a new lease on life from there, putting up 27.8 points on .459 shooting over his final 11 playoff games. The way that the Cavs exited the playoffs led to lots of questions about whether this team needs to be blown up but Mitchell did his part to quiet the noise in his exit interview. It’s not up to him, ultimately, but for now we would expect the Cavs to continue moving forward with Mitchell has their franchise player.

James Harden

SG, Cleveland Cavaliers

ADP: 15.5 / 13.7 (Yahoo/ESPN) | Total Value: 12/21 (8/9-cat) | Per-Game Value: 13/23 (8/9-cat)

Harden has become the master of the graceful exit and proved his credentials yet again in 2025-26. He looked set up for his twilight years after re-signing with the Clippers over the summer but all was not well when the two sides got together to discuss what happens next year; he quietly submitted a trade request after playing to his usual standard and was a member of the Cavs within 48 hours. Even with LA limping to a 6-21 start, Harden remained productive and helped shoulder the load as the team worked its way back up the standings. Over his lengthy career there has been no shortage of evidence that Harden’s game just fits with everyone else under the sun. His turn to playmaker over the last handful of seasons has given him legitimate longevity and even though he’s not the box-score wrecker he used to be, The Beard remained an early-round value from wire to wire. Harden lost some scoring edge as a member of the Cavs but that was volume-driven (17.5 to 13.3 shots per game), as he actually improved his FG% from .417 with the Clippers to .466 with his new squad. All told he produced top-25/35 value with Cleveland and the scoring slide wasn’t that damaging; Harden’s 23.6 points per game overall were his most since 2020-21 and the free throw percentage was a new career-best.

The playoffs reinforced whatever you thought about Harden coming into the season. There were moments of brilliance but also a handful of clunkers. Harden had significant turnover problems against two terrific defenses and while he generally got enough buckets and created enough shots for his team to get by, he did surrender more than his fair share of points going the other way — and that’s without getting into his individual defense. When Harden was on, he was the kind of singular talent who could take over and win playoff games on his own. He’s just not that guy every single night anymore, and while it’s easy to say that Harden was not a “playoff riser,” in fairness to him we have to point out that the Raptors stuck Scottie Barnes on him from wire to wire and the Pistons tried to match him up with Ausar Thompson as much as possible. Harden’s production wasn’t all-world but don’t kid yourself about his quality — his opponents made it a point to allocate their best defensive resources to stop Harden from getting going, choosing instead to live with Donovan Mitchell driving the bus. It’s a compliment of the highest order.

Evan Mobley

PF, Cleveland Cavaliers

ADP: 19.3 / 32.2 (Yahoo/ESPN) | Total Value: 61/56 (8/9-cat) | Per-Game Value: 59/49 (8/9-cat)

Mobley’s final numbers are relatively uninspiring given his talent and skill set. Fantasy GMs didn’t get anything close to the ADP here but Mobley was dynamite in punt-FT% builds. When you ignore his brutal mark at the charity stripe, he rockets up to top-20/10 standing with a slew of other numbers in shouting range of previous career-highs. Mobley may never prove to be a good free throw shooter but this year’s failures felt extreme considering he was around .720 over the previous two seasons, so hopefully that’s easy money for him to make next season. Unlike his frontcourt partner, who we’ll get to in a second, Mobley did not really ride the wave of James Harden arriving. He was a top-40 value before the All-Star break and a top-70 player after, and that is close enough to Harden’s arrival to draw some reasonable conclusions. After the break, Mobley saw his scoring and rebounds increase but everything else went in the wrong direction. His assists (4.0 to 2.8), steals (0.9 to 0.4), blocks (2.0 to 1.3) and 3-pointers (1.1 to 0.6) all fell but Mobley shot better with an elite ball-handler making the plays, hitting .611 from the field compared to .512 before the break. The Harden effect would’ve been big had Mobley’s defensive production held level, but that was not the case.

The postseason was neither here nor there for Mobley. He had some good scoring numbers but never showed the ability to rise up and take over a game for more than a couple of possessions at a time. The defense was strong and Mobley wasn’t exactly bad but the Cavs should not have needed 14 games to get through the first two rounds with all of their talent, and might not have survived seven if the Raptors had everyone healthy. If any moves get made it does feel like Mobley would only be included for an obvious upgrade, and he remains a core guy for the Cavs. Fantasy GMs will probably take their chances with Mobley’s FG% staying elevated alongside Harden for a full season and hopefully the rest of his numbers catch up.

Jarrett Allen

C, Cleveland Cavaliers

ADP: 55.7 / 55.2 (Yahoo/ESPN) | Total Value: 107/93 (8/9-cat) | Per-Game Value: 83/69 (8/9-cat)

This is just a sneak peek of the Season Wrap. The entire roster is covered, as well as the Fantasy Star, Letdown, One to Watch and One Burning Question for this team. You’ll need to have an Ethos 360, All-Sport or NBA FantasyPass membership. Click here to learn more and sign up! Premium Access Required

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Mike Passador

Mike graduated from Boston University’s Dual Degree Program with a BA in Economics and a BS in Business with Concentrations in Marketing and Operations Management. He is a faithful supporter of Toronto sports and the Detroit Lions and is always ready to be let down. Tweet to him @Mike_Pandador, but if you badmouth Jose Calderon you might get blocked.

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