Scouting one-pager: Cleveland Cavaliers (CLE)
2025-26 regular season · 82 games · 7,381 FGA. Auto-generated by scouting/build_onepager.py from public data; every number traceable to a gated pipeline in this repo. Shot pricing uses the 2023-24 shot-quality model, whose season-out transfer was validated in the backtest; shot-making is empirical-Bayes shrunk before it is allowed to drive a conclusion.
Terms
- PPS: Points per shot: total points on field-goal attempts divided by attempts. Free throws excluded.
- xPPS: Expected points per shot - the model's fair price of a shot diet: what an average shooter would score on the same attempts, judged from location and shot type alone, before knowing what went in.
- shot-making: Actual minus expected points per 100 shots: conversion above or below what the shot diet itself explains. Positive means making shots the model prices as hard.
- EB making: A player's shot-making after empirical-Bayes shrinkage: the observed number pulled toward the league mean in proportion to its sampling noise. The number to trust for projection.
- FGA: Field-goal attempts.
- RAPM: Regularized adjusted plus-minus: a ridge regression crediting each player with net points per 100 possessions while adjusting for the other nine players on the floor.
- net_100: Net points per 100 possessions: 100 x plus-minus / possessions; sits on the same scale as the NBA's published net rating.
- rush: Shots in the final four seconds of a period - the desperation window where both shot selection and execution collapse.
- empirical Bayes: Estimate the spread of true skill across the league from the data, then pull each individual's noisy estimate toward the league mean in proportion to its noise.
- shrinkage weight: The fraction of an observed number that survives empirical-Bayes regression: 1 means fully trusted, 0 means replaced by the league mean.
- CI: Confidence interval.
Keys
- Sam Merrill is a genuine shot-maker: +7.8 pts/100 above expectation after empirical-Bayes shrinkage; contest even the bad shots.
- Best shot diet: Jarrett Allen (1.23 xPPS on 528 FGA). The value is where the shots come from; deny the spot, not the release.
- Their most-used five that wins its minutes: D. Mitchell - J. Allen - D. Wade - E. Mobley - J. Tyson (+16.6/100 over 169 possessions).
Shot profile vs league
| CLE | League | Δ |
|---|
| PPS (points per shot) | 1.122 | 1.091 | +0.031 |
| xPPS, the shot-diet price* | 1.131 | 1.097 | +0.034 |
| Shot-making, pts/100 vs model | -0.9 | -0.5 | -0.3 |
| Rim share | 28.8% | 28.4% | +0.4 pp |
| Mid-range share | 7.5% | 10.0% | -2.6 pp |
| Three share | 44.2% | 41.5% | +2.7 pp |
| Corner share of threes | 24.0% | 25.9% | -1.9 pp |
| Final-4s (rush) shot share | 2.0% | 1.8% | +0.2 pp |
* xPPS prices where they shoot from, independent of whether shots fell: the stable, scoutable part of the profile (year-over-year r ≈ .9).
Personnel (top 8 by volume)
| Player | FGA | PPS | xPPS (diet) | Making/100 | EB making | RAPM/100 |
|---|
| Donovan Mitchell | 1,403 | 1.126 | 1.046 | +8.0 | +6.4 | +3.7 |
| Evan Mobley | 859 | 1.164 | 1.226 | -6.2 | -5.0 | +1.3 |
| Jaylon Tyson | 670 | 1.184 | 1.159 | +2.5 | +1.4 | -0.0 |
| Jarrett Allen | 528 | 1.278 | 1.228 | +5.0 | +3.6 | +1.8 |
| Sam Merrill | 484 | 1.248 | 1.100 | +14.8 | +7.8 | +2.7 |
| De'Andre Hunter | 482 | 0.998 | 1.074 | -7.6 | -4.9 | -1.8 |
| Darius Garland | 377 | 1.058 | 1.030 | +2.9 | +1.3 | +0.1 |
| James Harden | 352 | 1.159 | 1.041 | +11.9 | +5.6 | +0.5 |
EB making = shot-making regressed to league mean by reliability: the number to trust. RAPM from the opponent-adjusted 2025-26 lineup model (±≈3/100 CI at a season of minutes; treat as descriptive).
Most-used lineups
| Lineup | Min | Poss | Net/100 |
|---|
| D. Mitchell - D. Hunter - D. Garland - E. Mobley - J. Tyson | 89 | 190 | -14.7 |
| D. Mitchell - J. Allen - D. Wade - E. Mobley - J. Tyson | 80 | 169 | +16.6 |
| J. Harden - D. Mitchell - D. Wade - S. Merrill - E. Mobley | 64 | 127 | +3.1 |