Why the Cavs’ 52 wins with 41 different starting lineups bodes well for NBA playoffs

The Cleveland Cavaliers closed the 2025-26 campaign with their 41st starting lineup on Sunday, meaning they played literally half of their games with a different first five. In spite of that, the Cavs finished the regular season with a 52-30 record as the fourth seed in the NBA’s Eastern Conference.

“Just persevering through the struggles,” Cleveland head coach Kenny Atkinson said on Sunday. “Got to be proud of that and understand that those struggles are going to help us, I think, in the playoffs. Big picture is you have to almost have to practice the struggles. You have to go through those experiences. So that’s positive, even though it was not easy to go through. And then, as a coach, I know you can file something away from every game that you play.

“All the different starting lineups, the in and out of guys having to fight through injuries and come back, return to play, return to perform, all that. It makes you stronger, and it’s made our bench stronger. You see the young guys; these guys have all played in regular-season games, big games for us, and helped us win. So it makes me believe that we’re going to be more prepared for the playoffs this year because of all that.”

Of the Cavs’ 20 five-man units that have been on the floor together the most, 17 of them have played fewer than 56 minutes. Here are their three most-used combinations:

• Darius Garland, Donovan Mitchell, De’Andre Hunter, Jaylon Tyson, Evan Mobley (89 minutes)
• Donovan Mitchell, Jaylon Tyson, Dean Wade, Evan Mobley, Jarrett Allen (80 minutes)
• James Harden, Donovan Mitchell, Sam Merrill, Dean Wade, Evan Mobley (64 minutes)

Obviously, Garland and Hunter aren’t around anymore, so that lineup data is basically irrelevant.

The Mitchell-Tyson-Wade-Mobley-Allen blend found plenty of success and synergy during the winter months, but Tyson is likely to be the eighth or ninth man in the rotation because of the trade deadline moves for Harden, Keon Ellis, and Dennis Schroder, plus the return of Max Strus.

And while that third quintet of that list is certainly one to bank on, it excludes Allen, one of the team’s top players.

“This is going to be the reverse of last year,” Atkinson said. “Last year, [we] were healthy. [This year], we’re banged up, and you’re positive like, ‘Man, let’s just get to the finish line healthy.’ So [we] tried to navigate it the best we could. Sure, there were times where it was frustrating, no doubt, especially when we were 17-16.

“But I think the way we turned it into a positive, like, ‘Hey, this could be the opposite of last year. We could end up being healthy at the end of the season, which is the most important.” And probably, besides Thomas [Bryant], it looks like it’s trending in that direction.”

The Cavs’ likely starters against the Toronto Raptors will feature as much size as possible, and it very well may be the most effective, anyhow. The combination of Harden, Mitchell, Wade, Mobley, and Allen has played only four games together for 33 total minutes. Even shrinking that down to the “new core four” without the small forward position, it is still only seven games with 92 minutes of action.

“The good thing about it is we have a really good team,” Harden said. “If we didn’t have the talent, then it’s like… it’d be difficult. But we have the team. And I think the most important thing is health going into these games. When we do that, then we can figure everything else out — the X’s and O’s, the matchups, and what we should do.

“And honestly, every team is going to play us different, so I think going into games, teams are gonna play us one way, then they make an adjustment, then we figure it out and make another adjustment. It doesn’t really matter.”

It’s been a whole lot of learning each other on the fly, and it’ll continue to be that way, even in the postseason, as the Wine and Gold pursue winning an NBA championship.

“Just the tendencies of everybody or the tendencies of James,” Allen said in late March. “Just seeing how he plays off a certain pick-and-roll, seeing when he wants iso. We know he’s a great iso player, so I’m just trying to figure out when to be in the dunker, when to set the pick and roll, just how we all mesh together. That’s going to take some time, especially when we have talent like Donovan and James.”

Mobley believes the quartet brings a “great dynamic.”

“Not many teams can handle two bigs, and then having guards like that as well that’s just offensive threats,” Mobley said. “It’s easier for us to score as bigs, and I think we relieve pressure on them with our screening ability and pressure on the rim and the defense as well.”

“They do an unbelievable job of moving,” Harden added. “One’s in a pick-and-roll, the other one is moving, spotting up, cutting. They’ve been playing with each other, balling for some years now, so they understand how to move off the basketball when one of them’s got it. So for me, just figuring out where they like the basketball or the spacing and going from there.”

How the Cavs and Raptors are on opposite sides of the same coin

Conversely, the Raptors’ grouping of Immanuel Quickley, RJ Barrett, Brandon Ingram, and Scottie Barnes has played a whopping 685 minutes together. Toronto’s point guard is dealing with a couple of nagging ailments, however, so his status is in question for the time being.

But the discrepancy between those amounts of court time serves as a perfect illustration of how truly little continuity the Cavs have had as a team since the deadline, and the entirety of the campaign for that matter. Winning 50-plus games in that kind of situation says a lot about the makeup of the team, which should be prepared for any scenario that comes its way.

“I have no doubt everybody in this locker room is ready,” Mitchell said before last week’s final stretch of games. “It’s just continuing to fine-tune and get better. At the end of the day, it would be great if we sat here and said, ‘Yeah, we have no flaws,’ but no team has no flaws. We have some of the things that we can clean up and fix.

“We have time to fix it, and we’re going to continue to build upon that, and the process, be process-oriented, continue to go, but we have a group that’s ready, that’s hungry, and I think we’ll be ready to go.”

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