CLEVELAND, Ohio — The Cavs are suddenly the most fascinating puzzle in the NBA.
James Harden is running pick-and-roll with Jarrett Allen. Donovan Mitchell is re-pairing with Evan Mobley. Keon Ellis, Dennis Schröder, Dean Wade and Jaylon Tyson are all in the mix. Kenny Atkinson has more pieces than he’s ever had — and 27 games to figure out how they fit together before the stakes become existential.
On the latest episode of the Wine and Gold Talk podcast, cleveland.com beat reporter Chris Fedor and host Ethan Sands dove headfirst into the most pressing tactical question surrounding this Cavaliers team: what lineups are actually going to make Cleveland dangerous when the playoffs arrive?
This is the episode that lays out the entire chessboard.
The staggering question that changes everything
The most immediately intriguing lineup question isn’t about who starts. It’s about what happens when Atkinson begins to stagger his stars in moments where games are often won and lost before the closing stretch even begins.
Fedor raised a genuinely compelling possibility that flips the conventional wisdom on its head:
“I’m wondering, just thinking out loud, if Kenny is going to remember last year it was Jarrett Allen, Darius Garland, Evan Mobley, Donovan Mitchell. I’m wondering if he’s going to default back to something like that and flip it a little bit and say, all right, when Donovan comes off the the floor does Evan come off the floor too and just let the James Harden, Jarrett Allen thing be the focal point of the offense.”
Atkinson could pair each star with their most complementary running mate — Mitchell with Mobley, Harden with Allen — and run two functionally elite units that feed off one another. It’s a chess move that could squeeze elite production out of every minute on the floor.
The two-big elephant in the room
The most controversial — and consequential — lineup question is whether Atkinson will keep Allen and Mobley on the floor together and, just as critically, when.
For Sands, that question is the one that holds the entire playoff puzzle together:
“The two big pairings, the two non-shooter pairings where Jarrett Allen and Evan Mobley are side by side when both or either James Harden or Donovan Mitchell are on the floor with them. And I think that becomes most intriguing based on whether or not Kenny Atkinson is going to utilize that as a closing unit.”
Last season, the two-big lineup was a defensive necessity.
With Darius Garland functioning as one of the worst defenders in the NBA by any statistical measure, Cleveland needed Allen and Mobley as a combined fortress — two elite rim protectors to clean up the messes a porous backcourt left behind.
But Fedor’s argument on the podcast is that the entire defensive calculus has shifted with Harden in the building:
“I just don’t think they need the two bigs as much as they did before because I just don’t think they need that same level of rim protection. ... With James Harden, you don’t need that same level of protection. You don’t need that same level of erase the mistakes defensively.”
Harden isn’t a defensive liability the way Garland was. You can’t set a screen, expect an easy switch, and exploit that mismatch play after play after play. The defensive floor of this Cavaliers team has risen dramatically — and that opens the door to more offensively dynamic lineups that don’t require both bigs on the floor simultaneously.
27 games to get it right
What makes this episode of Wine and Gold Talk so essential is the urgency attached to these questions.
The Cavs aren’t experimenting for fun. Every combination Atkinson runs over the next 27 games is a data point — a building block for a playoff run that the entire organization believes can end with a championship.
Do Harden and Allen keep clicking the way they have in their shared minutes, with a plus-7.9 net rating per 100 possessions? Does staggering Mitchell and Mobley together unlock another level from the Cavs’ franchise cornerstone? Can Atkinson trust depth pieces like Ellis and Schröder in high-pressure situations when a playoff series demands it?
These questions are alive, urgent, and completely unresolved — and Fedor and Sands are the sharpest voices covering them.
Listen to the Wine and Gold Talk podcast and understand why every lineup Atkinson puts on the floor right now could determine whether Cleveland raises a banner.
Here’s the podcast for this week: