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Evan Mobley closed his eyes. He began to breathe deeply. In, out. In, out.
He had arranged this meditation session for his family while on vacation in Papagayo, Costa Rica, in July. An instructor led the group through visualization exercises and a sound bath, using singing bowls, bells and gongs.
As Mobley settled onto his mat, the noises began to fade: the falling rain, the crash of waves, the squeals of monkeys. Even pestering mosquitoes couldn’t break Mobley’s focus.
Nothing really can when he’s in this mode, when he’s meditating. It’s something he does before every Cavaliers game, and whenever he feels the need to be grounded. To feel like … himself. The real Evan. Not who people expect him to be. “It just gets you to focus more,” Mobley says of the practice. “See what you need to see, think about what you need to think about.” When he’s here — surrendering to breath, to visualization — he enters a different state. “A calm, peaceful place,” as he says.
He needed that peace in Costa Rica. The trip allowed him to “refocus,” Mobley says, weeks after his No. 1-seeded Cavs endured a painful, early playoff exit. Mobley had had a breakout All-Star campaign, winning Defensive Player of the Year, and the expectations and noise mounted all year. Then, instead of leading Cleveland to its first finals berth since LeBron James left town, the team wiped out in the Eastern Conference semifinals. “Just knowing that we could have went so much further,” Mobley says, the disappointment still audible in his voice.
What do you want to see? What are the next steps you want to take in your life?
As the instructor posed these questions, Mobley contemplated his answers. The playoff exit was still fresh. He vowed to do everything in his control “so that doesn’t happen again.”
But it wasn’t just the loss that remained on his mind as the summer wore on. He continued to meditate as other kinds of noise continued to swirl around him. Expectations for him and for the Cavs continued to rise at a rapid clip. Cavs coach Kenny Atkinson said: “In the next two or three years (Mobley’s) going to be in the MVP conversation. Talent-wise, I don’t see why not.”
The expectations are enormous. Time has passed quickly, yet his ceiling still feels limitless. Even the 24-year-old Mobley is surprised that he’s now in his fifth season. “Year 4, all the other ones were like, ‘OK. It’s still early, but now Year 5 is like veteran veteran years,” he says, walking to the baseline after a morning shootaround in Miami last week.
As he leans back in a chair, the diamond earring in his right ear glimmers, about as flashy as Mobley gets. He’s so soft-spoken that sometimes his voice seems barely audible. He’s thoughtful in conversation, taking his time with each word with the same precision he uses on the court; no sentence is a run-on, no dribble is wasted. He knows what some think of him, that he’s too quiet. Too passive. Unable to fully assert himself on the court. It doesn’t bother him.
“They don’t know me,” Mobley says.
Mobley has reached a point in his life where he doesn’t feel the need to explain himself. And with so much chatter about him, about what he has been, about what he can become, meditating to narrow his focus, listen to his own thoughts, has never been more crucial.
Mobley says he believes that pressure isn’t real. “Pressure is only made up by you, usually yourself,” he says. “The outside is still made up by you, if you think about what people think about this or that, and just expectations. It’s only if you feed into it.”
“I just try to be myself at the end of the day,” he continues. “No matter what people think I should be.”
He didn’t always have this kind of confidence. Especially as a rookie, back in 2021. Mobley takes a breath, thinking about the toughest part of being a pro. For a moment, he lets his guard down. To reveal that he wasn’t always this sure of himself. His biggest struggle? “Learning to tune out the noise and all the talks about you. Just being yourself and being comfortable with that.”
While he’s more comfortable than ever in his skin, he’s constantly adapting, evolving, trying to figure out his identity within the Cavs offense and the franchise’s hopes for a title in the post-LeBron era. Standing 6-foot-11, Mobley has been compared to Giannis Antetokounmpo and Victor Wembanyama for his elite athleticism, uncanny hoops IQ and shot-blocking ability and 7-4 wingspan; a defensive juggernaut who has untapped offensive potential. But given the loss of guard Ty Jerome to the Grizzlies, his teammates expect him to shoulder even more of the offensive load. “I told (Evan) like, ‘Hey, you lose a guy like Ty, it’s you,’” says Donovan Mitchell, the Cavs’ superstar guard and a six-time All-Star. Meaning: You can have an even bigger impact. You can step up even more. “And he has,” Mitchell says. “He’s done the work and he’s put the time in.”
It’s a continuous process for Mobley of finding where he fits in on a team that probably doesn’t need him to completely dominate to achieve its goals. “You’re trying to get out of your comfort zone and become more aggressive, more dominant,” says Mitchell, who leads the team with 30.9 points per game this season. “And just figuring out when to balance that. I think it’s a unique position where you’re developing, but we’re also a really good team … He’s done a phenomenal job.”
“He’s going to continue to evolve and be even better,” Mitchell concludes.
Mobley is still ascending, not quite where he wants to be, where his team believes he can be. But that’s where Mobley finds joy: in the middle of the work, building and perfecting and morphing into the best version of himself, even if that self doesn’t resemble anyone else.
Mobley mentions his love for Marvel movies, especially “The Avengers” series. He breaks into a big smile, a refreshing reminder of his youth. The film franchise hasn’t just provided entertainment for him. “There’s a lot of life lessons that you can learn through some of the movies,” Mobley says. One that resonated with his own journey? “Being different,” Mobley says.
“Taller than most people,” he says, as one example. As he sprouted an astonishing 11 inches between the eighth and ninth grades, and standing about 6-7 by the time he entered high school, he became more aware of his height, because people made a big deal of it. Suddenly, he was towering over classmates. He learned to stand his ground, rather than shrink or feel self-conscious. But when he watches Marvel movies, including other favorites like “Avengers: Endgame,” “Black Panther” and “Thor,” according to his brother, Isaiah, he feels a connection to the characters, their stories. Different is celebrated. Different is powerful. Everyone comes from a different upbringing, and yet, they have superpowers that develop unexpectedly. Mobley has many superpowers on the court, some he has yet to unlock, but carries himself as if he is a regular person who happens to do extraordinary things with an orange leather ball.
“Larry! Larry!” he calls out to forward Larry Nance Jr. as shootaround in Miami comes to a close, and Nance and a few others walk toward the exit. “Let ‘em know I’m coming too.” As if one of the three Cavs team buses near Biscayne Boulevard would take off without one of their stars.
But Mobley was being sincere. His modesty, his quiet demeanor has long made others label him as “different.” He doesn’t feel the need to scream after a big play as many other players do. His quietness has long been mistaken for a lack of passion, but that couldn’t be farther from the truth. Mobley is ultra-competitive and goes all-out each play. “Maybe people think I’m quiet,” Mobley says, “but that’s what makes me me … I just try to stay confident in that and not look at it as a bad thing. I look at it as a positive.”
Marvel reminds him of that. “You’re naturally different, so people put you down because of that,” Mobley says. “But it could also be a superpower as far as how you think about it.” Indeed, Mobley’s demeanor allows him to focus — to be as mentally strong and disciplined as he is. It’s helped him evolve as a leader, too. In his own way. “There’s a lot of different ways to lead,” Mobley says. “My main way is definitely lead by example and also just having different relationships with different people. I have close-knit relationships with a lot of my teammates who I don’t have to say much. You can just tell by certain looks, certain topics, where you can just say a few words and they get the message.”
Mobley expresses himself in other ways off the court, too. He is currently taking piano lessons and owns a grand piano in both his Cleveland and California homes. He makes his own beats of various genres, including Afrobeats, and has always been musically inclined (he played saxophone in his elementary school’s band). Mobley is driven by faith and reads daily devotionals that his dad sends him each morning.
He lives by a phrase his dad has told him his whole life: “Keep it simple.” It isn’t just how he plays — fundamentals-first, team-first ball. It’s how he’s able to “block out all the noise,” Mobley says. Criticism. Opinions. He’s grown accustomed to hearing it. “He believes in, ‘I can only control what I can control,’” says Nicol, his mother. He never gets too high or too low, either. “He doesn’t draw attention to himself,” says Eric, his father, who served as an assistant coach at USC during Mobley’s lone college season and is now an assistant coach at SMU.
Despite his best efforts to simply blend in, attention continues to follow him. Part of that is because he seems to be in a kind of metamorphosis – blossoming offensively in ways his teammates haven’t seen before, a byproduct of the increased need created by Jerome’s departure. Mobley had been laboring to expand his range all offseason, launching thousands of 3s. There is still much room to grow. “We don’t know how high his ceiling is,” Cavs center Jarrett Allen says. “We think honestly he can be one of the best players in the league on the offensive and defensive end.”
In some ways, the 2025-26 season feels like an inflection point in Mobley’s career — a chance to become something new — in order for his team to out-run the ghost of LeBron, to win the championship. “He’s hard on himself,” Isaiah says. “Instead of, ‘I gotta be better.’ It’s like, ‘I wanna be better for the team.’ … I want to do everything in (my) power to help the team win.”
This past summer, Mobley refused to become complacent even after his best season yet, coming off the heels of signing a five-year, $224 million extension with the Cavs in 2024. “His work ethic had already been good,” says Andrew Olson, a Cavs assistant coach, “but I think he realized it needed to go another level. And he’s taken it to that next level.”
Mobley jumped back into the gym in July – quicker than he had in the previous four seasons since being drafted by Cleveland as the No. 3 overall pick out of USC in 2021. He pushed himself with two-a-day workouts. He ran on an outdoor track to improve his conditioning, as the hot California sun beat down his back. He ran the sand dunes in Manhattan Beach, too. He kept to a familiar rhythm: conditioning, gym, weight room. “Consistently,” Mobley says, “for a whole week straight where your body’s killing you and you just gotta keep going.”
This season, he’s hitting the 3-ball at a higher clip and continuing to defend at an elite level. He’s even bringing the ball up the floor at times like a point guard. Atkinson’s belief in him has buoyed him, Mobley says: “Every conversation we have is always positive. He always talks about how good I am, and my potential … Knowing a coach has that behind you, gives me a lot of confidence to go out there and play.” Mobley is also grateful for his teammates and the way they “empower me.” They encourage him to be aggressive. To call for the ball. To be … Evan. This version of Evan.
Those around him notice his growing confidence. “It’s at an all-time high,” Olson says. Especially offensively. “He’s trying new things,” Allen says. “When you’re confident and comfortable with yourself you’re able to explore your game and try out new elements of your game and you can see that happening.”
Mobley is stronger than ever, now even weightlifting on game days. “Which is something a little bit different. A lot of people will lift postgame,” says Derek Millender, the Cavs’ head strength and conditioning coach. “It was his idea.” His work ethic inspires teammates, too, as they see how early he shows up for practice. “Once you see that from a top guy, whether you’re six years in or a rookie, you know that means a lot and that kind of makes you get in the gym as well,” says forward De’Andre Hunter.
The Cavs are starting to find their footing after a slow start to the season, winning seven of their past nine to now sit at second in the Eastern Conference with a 10-5 record. The team has also been battling injuries, including to point guard Darius Garland, who recently suffered a toe issue.
Mobley, who is averaging 18.9 points and 8.8 rebounds per game heading into Wednesday’s matchup with Houston, has had to step up even more. He appears eager for the challenge. In the team’s first game against Miami last week, Mobley was relatively quiet offensively. But as the game wound down to the final minutes of regulation, Mobley drilled a monster 3, silencing the Miami home crowd with less than two minutes in regulation.
“We need it from him,” Atkinson said afterward. “And he’s prepared for it.”
Later that night in the Cavs locker room, Mitchell smiled when thinking about Mobley’s big 3. “I told him, ‘That’s going to be your ball, early.’ But that’s part of the process of figuring it out, right?” Mitchell says. “… Just finding that, like, when does he fit in, when does he continue to go be aggressive? That’s all part of that process. It’s part of that communication and that back and forth. He stepped up. And he was big time.”
“We don’t get to this point without him being dominant on both ends of the floor,” Mitchell continues. “Gotta give him his credit. He’s continuing to build and elevate every single night.”
Mobley once almost quit basketball. He was in sixth grade, and having consistently played up two grade levels, growing up in Murrieta, California, he was tired of being beaten on by the older, stronger boys. He was an easy target: tall but lanky. Skinny. Young. To make matters worse, Isaiah, 20 months his senior, was racking up all the accolades. Evan was just an afterthought.
“Dad, I don’t want to play basketball anymore,” Evan said.
“Hold on,” Eric said. “Pump your brakes. You’re just not on your right team (for your age group). You are really, really good, and you just don’t even know it. So, let’s try first to put you in your own age group and go from there.”
Evan reluctantly agreed, but soon realized his father was right. He dominated on his new team, scoring 30 points in his first game. Soon, he fell in love with the game. He began even asking his dad to take him to the court at 5 a.m. each day to practice.
Eric, who coached both Evan and Isaiah, taught both how to visualize success, a precursor to Evan’s love for meditation. They would visualize their free throws going in. They’d discuss how they wanted to play on the car rides to games. Eric would even hand Evan a pretend microphone in the kitchen and have him act like he was an NBA player giving a postgame interview. “How was the game, Evan? What do you think worked out there?”
Evan learned to play against grown men at an early age at LA Fitness, which allowed him to learn to handle physicality while undersized. “They didn’t really take us seriously,” Eric says, “because it’s like, ‘Man, why you got these little kids on the court?’”
As he entered high school around 6-7, he was a fundamentally sound player who flew under the radar. He rarely played as a freshman, mostly because he was injured. “No one knew about him,” says Etop Udo-Ema, his former Compton Magic AAU team coach. “No one was really excited about him.”
It wasn’t until his sophomore year, when he sprouted to 6-9, that he started receiving some attention. Udo-Ema remembers a game that year when Mobley grabbed the rebound, and when he realized an outlet pass wasn’t available, he took the ball up the floor himself. A double-team swarmed him in the corner, but Mobley calmly spun through the defenders and dunked — as if it was the easiest thing in the world. “That’s the moment where I thought, ‘Hey, man, this guy’s gonna be an NBA All-Star,’” Udo-Ema says. “It was just the instinctive s— that he did.”
Mobley had a quick-twitch, fast-jumping ability. He kept working, and when his body grew, he could dominate inside and block shots. He proved to be an elite scorer at USC, too. “He didn’t care about scoring, he just cared about winning,” former USC coach Andy Enfield says.
The Cavs loved his unselfishness. But the city deeply needed a franchise player in the rebuilding years since LeBron’s 2018 departure. The franchise had made four straight trips to the NBA Finals from 2015 to 2018 during James’s second stint in Cleveland and beat the Warriors to win the championship in 2016, but the team didn’t qualify for the playoffs in 2018-19, 2019-20 and 2020-21.
Expectations were high for Mobley. He was adapting in all kinds of ways, including off the court, adjusting to the Midwestern cold, having lived in California all his life. Given his high draft selection, he was also expected to dominate right away.
“At first, I didn’t really read into the expectations like that,” he says. “I just was me, initially. And then as the season went on and people start talking more about you, then it gets a little harder, because it’s a different case, especially coming from college to the NBA … I struggled with it for a little bit.”
Some felt he underperformed in summer league. “He wanted to do well, to do better,” Eric says. But Mobley continued to work and had a fantastic rookie campaign. Still, he didn’t win Rookie of the Year. Toronto’s Scottie Barnes did.
Instead of pouting, Mobley continued to work. Once again, he tuned out the noise of expectations. “You just end up realizing that you got here because of yourself and being yourself,” Mobley says. “So, you just keep doing that, and it’s gonna be good for you.”
The Cavs started turning things around, with Mitchell joining the team in 2022, and Darius Garland leading the break, and Allen holding it down in the post. Mobley was a constant force — especially on defense.
His work ethic allowed his game to evolve each season. He refuses to move on to drills unless he feels he got the drill exactly right, according to Olson. Mobley is “self-aware,” Olson says, “holding himself to that high standard.” His hoops IQ on the court helped elevate his game even more. Olson says he has an incredible memory. There’s moments when the coaching staff will reference a random play from many games ago, and Mobley will remember the exact sequence in impressive detail.
He worked on his nutrition, too, given that he was prone to ordering takeout often. He hired a chef. The improvements showed, but he wasn’t satisfied.
Two seasons ago, around Christmas 2023, Mobley texted Millender, the strength coach, saying: “Every day moving forward I want to do something.” Mobley had always been a hard worker, but this seemed to take things to a different level. “He wants to be great,” Millner says. “It shows that with his investments in himself and the way he goes about it.”
As the Cavs continued to inch closer toward playoff success, building on each year, Mobley became even more confident. Last season, during All-Star Weekend, his first year as an All-Star, he was asked: “Who will be the best player in the NBA in five years?”
“Best player in five years?” Mobley said, pausing. “Maybe me or Victor (Wembanyama).”
It was a shocking moment — a stark change from the rookie who rarely spoke up. It also put the rest of the league on notice: Mobley himself is even beginning to understand his own superpowers.
Mobley is a bit more vocal this season, too, especially as he realizes he has to continue to evolve as a leader for the Cavs to go further. “Coming in every day harder and working and knowing that the younger guys are now looking up to me and seeing what I do,” he says. “I got to set an example.”
One of those players looking up to him is Jaylon Tyson, the 20th pick in the 2024 draft out of Cal. He’s become a reliable contributor, averaging double figures in scoring. Mobley often gives him tips on the floor. A quick piece of advice. A nod there. A high five there. And Tyson sees how hard Mobley competes. How hard he must compete. “Valuing every possession,” Tyson says. “All the little things he does.”
During a recent game, Tyson had the ball and was looking to pass to Mobley. Mobley was more vocal than he had been: “Throw it higher. I’ll go get it and do the rest.” It made a difference to Tyson — even if it was a brief message. When Mobley speaks, everyone listens. That’s the kind of respect he commands.
Mitchell remembers a similar moment against Toronto in late October. “He was commanding the young guys where to be and where he wanted the ball,” Mitchell says. “It’s not all of a sudden going to happen, but he’s finding his comfort zone to continue to comment on things and use his voice.”
That game, Mitchell was out. Mobley would have to step up even more. At one point during the fourth quarter during the back-and-forth game, Mobley held the ball on the left side of the floor. Having worked on his ballhandling over the summer, he toyed with his defender, crossing over smoothly to jet the other way, driving to the hoop with his left hand.
When three defenders collapsed onto him, he didn’t panic. As one cut off the lane, he simply shifted the ball to his right and laid it up softly on that side of the rim.
It wasn’t flashy. It wasn’t arrogant. It wasn’t for the crowd and it wasn’t for social media. He didn’t boast or pound his chest. He kept it simple, almost as if he could hear his father’s words, running back on defense, ready for another possession.
Just another step in the evolution of Evan.
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Mirin Fader is a senior writer for The Athletic, writing long-form features, primarily on the NBA. Mirin is also the New York Times best-selling author of GIANNIS: The Improbable Rise of an NBA Champion and DREAM: The Life and Legacy of Hakeem Olajuwon. She has told compelling human-interest features on some of our most complex, most dominant heroes from the NBA, NFL, WNBA and NCAA, most recently at The Ringer. Her work has been featured in the Best American Sports Writing books. She lives in Los Angeles. Follow Mirin on Twitter @MirinFader
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