Cleveland Cavaliers 7-footer Evan Mobley has agreed on a five-year, $224 million maximum rookie contract extension that could become worth as much as $269 million, agents Joe Smith and Thad Foucher of Wasserman told ESPN on Saturday.
Mobley, 23, has quickly become one of the league's elite young defensive big men, including being selected third in voting for Defensive Player of the Year in 2023 as well as being selected First Team All-Defense.
He averaged 15.7 points, 9.4 rebounds and 1.4 blocks this past season for Cleveland, while also posting career-high shooting percentages from every range: 57.9% shooting overall, 37.3% shooting from 3-point range and 71.9% from the free throw line.
Since arriving as the third overall pick in the 2021 NBA draft out of USC, Mobley has helped lead the Cavaliers to finishing seventh in defensive rating this past season, first overall in 2022-23 and fifth in 2021-22. Over that same span, Mobley is also one of just four players -- along with Anthony Davis, Jaren Jackson Jr. and Rudy Gobert -- to have at least 300 blocks and 150 steals, according to ESPN Stats and Information research.
He also held opposing players to 0.86 points per direct play on isolations and post-ups this past season, 5th-best among players to defend 3-plus actions per game, per Second Spectrum's tracking data.
Mobley also had arguably his best game as a professional in Cleveland's final game of the 2023 playoffs when he posted 33 points, 7 rebounds and 2 blocked shots in 43 minutes in a Game 5 loss to the eventual champion Boston Celtics.
He also went for 11 points, 16 rebounds and 5 blocks in Cleveland's Game 7 victory over the Orlando Magic in the first round -- a win that gave the Cavaliers their first series victory without LeBron James on the roster in over 30 years.
In that Magic series, Mobley became the first Cavaliers player to ever have back-to-back playoff games with at least five blocks in consecutive playoff games and his 21 blocks over the course of the 7-game series was the most by any player in a playoff series in franchise history.
He finished the Boston series with averages of 21.4 points and 62.7% shooting -- joining James (2016 versus the Toronto Raptors) and Kyrie Irving (2017 versus the Celtics) as the only players to average at least 20 points on 60 percent shooting in a playoff series in Cleveland history.
It's been a productive summer for the Cavaliers, who not only have now inked Mobley to this max contract extension but also hired Kenny Atkinson to replace J.B. Bickerstaff as the team's head coach and signed Donovan Mitchell to his own three-year, $150.3 million maximum contract extension, keeping together the core of a team that has gone to back-to-back playoffs and has won 99 games over the past two years.
Atkinson, long considered one of the league's best developmental coaches, told reporters about wanting to get Mobley involved more offensively at his introductory news conference after being hired by Cleveland earlier this month.
"I do think we can schematically get the ball in his hands more, quite honestly," Atkinson said, "and it's going to be multiple ways."
ESPN's Tim Bontemps contributed to this report
