Re: Cleveland Cavaliers

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rusty2 wrote:Mark, I think you described Mitchell perfectly. The unbelievable thing is that the Cavs are still getting use to playing with each other. Remember when it took Lebron almost 2 seasons to get it straight with Miami. Wait until Rubio is ready !

Mitchell basically stepped out of the way of Garland for 3 quarters last night.

Caris Levert is as hard to figure out as his first name. I would hope that someone would offer the Cavs a real small forward for him and someone else.
rusty - I think Garland's versatility is what will make this work. He can make a play OR he can spot up and shoot. Same with Mitchell.

I agree Mitchell deferred to Garland that last game too. Until the last quarter. Then Mitchell took over the reigns. As Garland said after the game they realize that Mitchell is the veteran/playoff tested guy.

Living in NY when Levert was on the Nets I watched him a lot on cable. He is better now but overall still plays the same way.

As for Levert if you watch him he has a high upside/high downside game. He can make spectacular plays but also take low percentage shots and get out of control. The guy is in great shape this season so overall he is a definite plus but his performances, due to his shot selection, will widely vary.

Overall this team knows their roles - likes playing with each other - and is very young without egos. Hmm sounds like a certain Guardians team! With Donovan Mitchell now playing Jose Ramirez's role.
"I've suffered a great many tragedies in my life....most of them never happened". Mark Twain

Re: Cleveland Cavaliers

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Very happy for the major breakout by Lauri. He deserved it.

Look - it was not ideal to have him with Jarrett and Mobley here. Mitchell is the ideal fit.

This was a true win/win trade for both teams and all the players. Kudos to Altman. And BTW kudos to Danny Ainge because he pulled off a great rebuild trade as well.

civ - Levert was not known for his defense on the Nets but seems to at least be working hard for the Cavs.
"I've suffered a great many tragedies in my life....most of them never happened". Mark Twain

Re: Cleveland Cavaliers

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Defensive up-and-comers
We asked the coaches to identify a few of the young players in the league who could one day enter this conversation about the league’s best defensive players. Here are some of those promising youngsters.

Herb Jones, New Orleans forward (24 years old): “What he does in terms of being able to defend at the point of attack, being able to read and anticipate — he’s one of the few guys who can block shots and get steals, and his numbers speak for themselves. … What allows him to do all that is that his body is prototypical (of an) NBA defender, with his length, his athleticism, his strength. And then just his mind, he’s a guy with just a really high basketball defensive IQ.” — West assistant coach

Evan Mobley, Cleveland big (21): “His length and size and ability to move is pretty special. He has abilities on both ends of the floor, but he seems to be willing to defend at this early stage, too.” — East assistant coach

Isaac Okoro, Cleveland wing (21): “Like Jimmy Butler, he’s not going to give you anything easy, and not just because of the level of physicality. I think he embraces that role of being that guy. He takes that challenge, and it’s hard to do every night. It’s easy to get up for the marquee matchup, or it’s easy to maybe take possessions off here and there. But he doesn’t seem to do that. He just has that mindset and knows how impactful that is for a group. He’s a guy that buys in. He’s not necessarily worried about anything else. He’s comfortable knowing, ‘I can impact winning by doing just this.’ ” — East coach

Re: Cleveland Cavaliers

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‘Our spirit seemed to have left the building’: What they’re saying after Cavaliers win vs. Lakers

Published: Nov. 07, 2022, 5:00 a.m.


Tim Bielik, cleveland.com

CLEVELAND, Ohio — The Cavaliers are now on an eight-game winning streak as they rode a dominant second half to beat LeBron James and the Lakers, 114-100, on Sunday in Los Angeles.

Donovan Mitchell led the way for the Cavs with 33 points. Darius Garland added 24 points and seven assists, and Jarrett Allen recorded another double-double (16 points, 11 rebounds).

James finished with 27 points and seven rebounds.

The Cavs struggled at the start with the exception of Mitchell, who kept them in early. He had 15 of the Cavs’ 30 points in the first quarter and 18 in the final three combined as his teammates got going.

Mitchell’s all-around play caught the attention of NBA TV’s Isiah Thomas.

“Mitchell has gotten better. You wouldn’t think that you would say that, but he’s gotten better as a basketball player,” Thomas said in a postgame segment. “If you’re a guard playing next to Mitchell right now, you’re going to have good numbers. Now, the guard playing next to Mitchell happens to be an All-Star point guard who has raised his game.”

The story of the game was the second half. After giving up 64 points in the opening half, the Cavs held the Lakers to just 36 in the final 24 minutes.

“Our spirit seemed to have left the building,” Lakers coach Darvin Ham told reporters when asked about the second half. “What we saw in the first half is how we want to play. We were right there toe-to-toe with them, actually had the lead going into halftime. Then second half, shots don’t go down, a few turnovers happen and we kind of dropped our heads a little bit. They just kept revving it up, revving it up.”

The Cavaliers have now won four games when trailing by 10 points or more, which is the most in the NBA heading into Monday, when the Cavaliers take on the Clippers.
Behind enemy lines

Sunday was only the second time in James’ career that he has lost against the Cavaliers. The first was in his first season in Miami in 2010-11.

The big thing that James has taken notice of when it comes to his old team is their workmanlike approach to basketball.

“I think we saw last year what team that they could become,” James said after the game. “Seems like they just want to play ball. I’m looking at their roster, you don’t see too many guys all over social media, showing off they got this, and showing off they got that. Just like a bunch of guys that just come to work and just want to play ball.

“That’s probably a joy for a coach and a coaching staff, just knowing you’ve got a bunch of kids who want to come in and play ball, and then a grandpa who looks over everybody in Kevin Love.”

Socially speaking

“36 second half points for the Lakers after giving up 36 in the first quarter alone. My word,” Carter Rodriguez of The Check Down Podcast tweeted.

“Cavs are playing at an elite level. Their backcourt demolished us. Whew,” NBA 2KTV host Chris Manning tweeted.

“A big element with the Cavs is how suddenly they have so many ways to hurt you. Mitchell has 30, Garland making plays scoring and assisting, power inside, Love’s (versatility), shooters (since apparently Wade is legit now?!). They have a lot of guys who can get their own, too,” Matt Moore of Locked On Sports tweeted.

“Lakers waving the white flag with five minutes left in the 4th, you simply hate to see it!” Jordan Zirm of The Sporting News tweeted.

“LeBron James can no longer carry a team in games they should win, especially at home. Lakers just outscored in the 2nd half 56-36 by LeBron’s former team AT HOME,” Skip Bayless of Fox Sports tweeted.

“Cavs are a contender,” Mack Perry of the It’s Cavalier podcast tweeted.

“Wooooo let’s go @cavs keep pushing it!!!!” Krayzie Bone of Bone Thugs N Harmony tweeted.

“How about them CAVS!!!” Jason Nicholas of WOIO-TV tweeted.
"I've suffered a great many tragedies in my life....most of them never happened". Mark Twain

Re: Cleveland Cavaliers

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Hollinger: Cavs, Jazz thriving after post-trade; checking in on Pels, Nuggets, Jabari Smith Jr.
John Hollinger
Nov 7, 2022
29

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When it comes to NBA trades, we tend to fast-forward fairly immediately to the idea that one team “won” or “lost.” Sometimes that can be a fair way of viewing things, particularly if one team’s end of the deal ends up providing much less value than anticipated. Often, however, that construct misses the whole idea of trading. The more common instance is that both teams can get something out of it because they are at different stages or have different needs or contractual situations.

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The Donovan Mitchell-centered trade between the Utah Jazz and Cleveland Cavaliers this past summer offers a great example. Disclaimer: We’re just three weeks into the season, and this trade will be evaluated on a decade-long horizon given the draft picks involved. Yet, it already feels like both teams made out significantly better as a result of the deal, in ways that seem like they’ll translate beyond a 10-game sample.

It’s a great story! And because much of our early-season attention has been diverted by high-profile tire fires, let’s use our extra hour this week to keep things positive. (All stats and records are through Sunday’s action.)

The Jazz and Cavaliers are a combined 16-4 with Cleveland looking every bit like the contender they hoped to be as a result of the trade, and Utah using the assorted parts they accumulated to shock the NBA with their 8-3 start (if you’re curious, the teams won’t meet until mid-December).

The protagonists in the deal have everything to do with this. Mitchell has been electric in Cleveland, fitting in seamlessly next to Darius Garland in the backcourt from Day 1 and defending with much greater zeal than he’d shown in his final two seasons in Utah. Mitchell ranks ninth in PER among players with at least 250 minutes played while absorbing a huge usage burden (also ninth). If he can sustain his 62.4 percent true shooting — more than 5.0 points higher than his previous career high — he not only will return to the All-Star Game in Salt Lake City in February as a member of his new team, but he also has a great chance of making one of the three All-NBA teams for the first time.

Cleveland gave up lots of draft equity in this deal — three unprotected firsts, two pick swaps and 2022 lottery pick Ochai Agbaji — and won’t feel the sting from this for years. (The first pick isn’t owed until 2025.)

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Maybe the Cavs never will if Mitchell is as good as he’s looked so far. The Cavs have arguably been the best team in the league and, with a core of four players aged 26 or younger, are positioned to hold this perch for a while.

Cleveland ranks second defensively and has the league’s best scoring margin despite missing Garland for six of its nine games and Mitchell for one as well. This isn’t just beating up on minnows either; the Cavs have already beaten Boston twice and won four road games.

Thus far the trade for Mitchell is working exactly as intended with Jarrett Allen and Evan Mobley sealing off the rim on defense and making up for the lack of stature of Mitchell and Garland in the backcourt. Meanwhile, the latter two are carrying the offense, and Kevin Love is the only other Cav with a usage rate above 20.

That’s important because it also eliminates the two primary risk factors from this deal. The first is Mitchell’s free agency in 2025 — the better things go in Cleveland, the harder it is for him to justify leaving. The second is the value of these picks themselves — if the Cavs are good through 2029 and end up forking out picks in the 20s, they’ll gladly make that swap.

The Jazz, meanwhile, may require a bit more of a microscope in the short term. They beat the Clippers on Sunday night with the aid of LA missing its final 17 3-point attempts, and the Jedi defense on 3-pointers and free throws have become almost comical. Utah opponents are shooting 32.3 percent on 3s and 72.6 percent on free throws, ranking 29th in the first category and 28th in the second. At some point, the shooting luck will even out, and the Jazz’s shockingly lofty perch at 10th in defense will regress some.

go-deeper
GO DEEPER

Mike Conley and the Utah Jazz are the NBA's biggest early season surprise. Can it last?

To focus on that, however, misses the larger story of how the trade has turbo-boosted the Jazz rebuild at least as much as the deal with Minnesota for Rudy Gobert. In addition to the draft picks from Cleveland, Utah got two big pieces who have played a major role in this start. Lauri Markkanen has been Utah’s best player thus far. If voting were held today, he’d likely make the All-Star team. Markkanen is shooting 66.7 percent on 2-pointers while nearly doubling his career assist rate and might still be leaving money on the table: He’s at a career-low 30.0 percent from 3, which was his alleged strength as a stretch four.

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Additionally, the Jazz added Collin Sexton in the trade and signed him to a four-year deal. Inserted into the sixth-man role he’d always seemed ideal for, he’s averaging 31.2 points per 100 possessions on 60.7 percent true shooting. Notably, he’s increased his rates of both 3-pointers and free throws and cut out a lot of the tough 2s that were part of his diet in Cleveland; he’s only taken one 2 longer than 15 feet all season. Under contract for a reasonable four years and $71 million, the 23-year-old guard looks like one of several players who look like long-term keepers.

Sexton also is part of a bigger-picture story. Utah’s young new coach, 34-year-old Will Hardy, has cobbled together a coherent team offense out of what looked to be a roster of shoot-first mercenary short-timers. A backcourt with Jordan Clarkson, Sexton and Nickeil Alexander-Walker in it didn’t seem promising for anyone else with aspirations to someday touch the ball, yet the Jazz are pinging the ball around for open shots and rank seventh in assist rate.

With stretch bigs Markkanen and Kelly Olynyk often finishing games at four and five and multiple quick guards who can exploit seams, the Jazz frequently play with “five-out” lineups, and guarding that is tough. Clarkson (the product of another Cleveland-Utah trade) has been a revelation with his 8.2 dimes per 100 roughly doubling his rate the past two seasons in Utah. He’s also averaging 2.5 assists per turnover, which would easily be a career high.

There is still the bigger-picture question of where all of this leaves Utah. The Jazz were theoretically tanking this season — as much value as they might get from the future picks from Cleveland and Minnesota, one of the bigger potential returns from the two trades for Utah was its own pick in a loaded 2023 draft. Even if the luck gods reel in Utah’s defense, the fact that the Jazz are ninth in offense while still figuring out how everything fits bodes well for their staying power. Danny Ainge could yet trade every good player and hardwire a tank job, but the Olynyk acquisition was a tell that things probably aren’t headed that way.

Utah being good opens up some interesting questions. Clarkson, Olynyk and Mike Conley all are on the wrong side of 30, and the working presumption heading into the season was that the Jazz would quickly move on from them for more draft picks. Does that still make sense if they can land a home game in the Play-In Tournament or, dare we say it, grab a top-six seed outright?

More broadly, rather than a “rebuild,” will this turn into a “reload” around Markkanen (25), Sexton (23), Malik Beasley (25), Jarred Vanderbilt (23), Talen Horton-Tucker (21), Agbaji (22), and impressive rookie rim protector Walker Kessler (21)?

Thus, Utah’s early quality is a vexing issue. Surprise seasons like this can be dangerous territory, as the 2013-14 Suns and 2020-21 Knicks can attest. With several quality players but no true superstar, much like those teams had, it leaves open the question of what the next move is on the chessboard. Those Suns and Knicks teams opted for too much too soon and paid the price.

One surmises that Utah will be more patient, especially given the surfeit of future picks the Jazz still have coming their way. (One ironic thought: A year or two down the road, could they be in the market for a blockbuster-type move to trade some of their slew of picks for a young All-Star?)

Nonetheless, it’s hard to see the current situation as anything other than a win-win. The current lottery odds don’t require a team to be that bad to have a realistic shot at Victor Wembanyama or Scoot Henderson. If Utah’s early-season magic fades, it has plenty of time to get to an appropriate win total. If not, the Jazz are one of the season’s best stories as a surprise playoff team.

Ditto for Cleveland, which missed the playoffs in the Play-In Tournament last season and now seems a likely top-four seed in the Eastern Conference, if not more. The Cavs didn’t need to make big strides this season, not with the age of their key players or the still-vexing need for a true 3-and-D small forward (Caris LeVert and Dean Wade have teamed up to credibly paper this over for the time being, but at the highest levels, one still worries if that’s quite enough) or Mitchell and Garland still figuring out their partnership or Mobley still being just 21 years old. But they’re here, despite early injuries, and the vibes are strong.


So yes, it’s a few game’s worth of returns on a trade that has a geologic time-scale evaluation horizon. Still, the early returns are at the ceiling of what either side expected. Cleveland and Utah both walked into this trade looking years down the pipeline, but both sides have plenty of reason to be ecstatic about it after just three weeks of basketball.

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Jarrett Allen: Comic book enthusiast, plant dad and the Cavs’ anchor on the interior
Kelsey Russo
Nov 9, 2022
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In a beloved comic strip, a 6-year-old boy named Calvin tells his stuffed tiger Hobbes, “It’s a magical world, Hobbes, ol’ buddy. Let’s go exploring!”

It’s one of Jarrett Allen’s favorite quotes from his most treasured comic strip. Allen has the collector’s edition of every Calvin and Hobbes comic and used to have a mural of the characters on his wall.

The comic has shaped the Cleveland Cavaliers center’s outlook on life in more ways than one.

“I love just going through life, just seeing things and learning about it, no matter what it is,” Allen told The Athletic. “Just try to go out there and try to touch it in some way and try to just enjoy it.”

Allen’s infectious smile and cool swagger have made the 6-foot-11 All-Star a Cavaliers fan favorite. He has quickly established himself as one of the NBA’s best defensive bigs, and the Cavaliers rewarded him with a five-year, $100 million contract in August 2021.

But Allen is also just like you and me. He’s the guy who shows up to All-Star weekend wearing a super casual outfit and asks the media, “What am I supposed to do, wear a $5,000 chain to a game?”

When Allen’s not on the court, he’s a plant dad of sorts, caring for Monsteras to Parlor Palms, Money Trees, Swedish Ivy and Tulips.

“I just grab a plant every now and then. I like the color green in my house,” Allen said. “Eventually I want to get into gardening. Probably when I’m older and I have the actual space outside to actually create pots, do the little seeds, start the seedlings inside and then when it comes time for growing season – you see I already researched it – move everything outside and get that going.”

Allen is dexterous in the kitchen as well, an interest he developed when he was younger. He experiments with different types of bread. He’ll often bake English muffins and Jewish breads like challah and babka from scratch. But nothing is off limits in his kitchen.

“I made some ciabatta the other day, homemade ciabatta, this garlic pesto sauce, bacon, tomatoes, chicken, it was a good little meal,” Allen said. “It’s just stuff that’s fun to make. I like measuring the stuff out and waiting for the time.”

Cavaliers assistant coach Antonio Lang, who works with bigs like Allen, Robin Lopez and Evan Mobley, said the 24-year-old isn’t afraid to get into DIY projects at home, too.

“He fixed an outfit the other day,” Lang told The Athletic. “He said, ‘Hey, ‘I’m gonna fix the bottom of my pants; I want you to see.’ So it’s always the interesting little things. I’ve learned so much stuff outside of basketball from him.”

That pair of pants? Allen watched a few clips on YouTube to fix a pair of jeans. He didn’t love the straight cut, so he tapered them by going on the inseam, measuring and sewing them.

“I think people really need to know how cool he is,” Lang said. “I’m always telling him that … I mean, the guy walks around with an Afro. No one wears an Afro; that should be cool in and of itself.”
Jarrett Allen (Ken Blaze / USA Today)

Lang found himself listening to CNN on a drive home one day when a conversation sparked by Allen about Mars left him wanting to know more. He brought tidbits from what he heard back to Allen.

“The thing that I love about him is I know what to expect with him on the court,” Lang said. “He’s always gonna give you his best regardless. But the thing that is really refreshing to me is the stuff that’s off the court that we talk about, like so many things. Like the young man got me interested in Mars. I never cared about anything outside of the Earth. Things like that.

“You can just talk to him about things that I guess you would say a normal basketball player wouldn’t talk about, like reading books. He tells me a good book that he read. A lot of like, nature types. So there’s a lot of things we kind of talk about that kind of fills the gaps because the season is so long.”

From traveling – he went to Australia and New Zealand this summer as a coach for Basketball Without Borders – to his love of learning, Allen embraces the appreciation for the small things in life.

Allen’s growth mindset was instilled by his parents, Cheryl and Leonard, at a young age. His brother, Leonard, who is three years older than him, also played a critical role.

“I guess me and my brother were competitive in different ways, not even sports, whether it’s who can eat the most cookies after dinner,” Allen said while laughing. “Just trying to improve stuff like that, who can win at Monopoly? It’s just trying to improve my skill set in anything.”

Allen’s love for exploring even molded his introduction to basketball. Jarrett, who was in middle school at the time, was hanging around one of Leonard’s basketball practices at Round Rock High, outside of Austin, Texes, when he found another gym and decided to check it out. There was a younger basketball team practicing, and the players invited Allen to join them.

“This is like sixth grade and I was like, ‘OK,’ and that’s how it started,” Allen said. “Sometimes I think it was meant to happen like that.”

When Allen was at Texas his freshman year, then-Longhorns head coach Shaka Smart would hold meetings with the freshmen regularly. In these meetings, Allen said Smart focused on teaching them about an aspect of life to grow as a person. From those meetings, Allen learned how to take care of his mind off the court.

“Sometimes he’d show Tom Brady or Usain Bolt, I don’t remember all of them, but there were certain things where they showed how they reached greatness, how they became excellent in every aspect of their life, even outside of sports,” Allen recalled. “And that in college kind of just piqued my interest to see how I can evolve off the court to help myself on the basketball court.”

“One of the great, great traits that Jarrett has is he loves to learn,” Smart told The Athletic. “He didn’t get so worked up like a lot of guys do, that he didn’t have all the answers at 18 years old. But instead, he took a growth mindset. And just tried to add to what he knew. And the thing about him, and I think this is a common trait of all the best players is, he learned really fast. You could work with him on something literally, a few times one week, and then you could see him put into action in a game the next week. And that’s rare.”

Allen entered college with that mindset in place largely because of his final three years of high school spent at St. Stephen’s Episcopal School, a boarding school in Austin. The school was about 45 minutes from his house, so Allen didn’t go home very often. It had a college-like atmosphere in terms of the learning environment.

“It was really a lot of independence there to try to shape us into adults, to be ready for the world,” Allen said. “And just that independence being young, having to do college-level work at 15 years old, I do think that shaped me the way I am today.”

His high school basketball coach, LaMont King, saw an advantage in seeing his players every day. In addition to practice, they had meals together and held team bonding activities. King would also see Allen or his other players as they walked to classes. King lived on campus with his wife, who Allen affectionately called ‘Mama King,’ and had players over for meals. Allen described them as a “campus mom and dad” for his teammates.

“Our community embraced him,” King told The Athletic. “And, it wasn’t just me the basketball coach, but it was the advisor, people in the dining hall he really looked up to and stuff like that. So, it was definitely a little community. And it matched his personality well. He got along with everybody, the janitors and the cooks, everybody.”

Allen had a sense of comfort with King. There was an open line of communication between the two, whenever Allen needed to talk to King he knew the coach was available. Sometimes King also wanted to talk to Allen.

“Coach King on the basketball court, I used to always tell him, if you’re not having fun, you’re not doing it right,” Allen said. “You can work hard and have a lot of fun doing it too. So that’s something that we instilled in each other and I still hold on to that fact today.”

That phrase, ‘always have fun’ is still on King’s board at St. Stephen’s. They use the board to draw up plays, but that phrase – which Allen voiced after he was named captain his junior year – stuck with King.

Allen returned to the school where he was named a McDonald’s All-American for a home game in December 2019. On that day, Allen’s No. 35 jersey was retired in front of alumni and students. The jersey is still at the school.

Smart knew early on that Allen would play in the NBA. But it wasn’t a topic they spoke about frequently during Allen’s freshman year.

“I remember, before his freshman season even started, I asked him, I said, ‘You know, Jarrett, what do you want to set as a goal for this year? And, kind of where do you want to be coming out of this season?’” Smart recalled.

“And he said – I thought it was a great answer – he said, ‘I just want to focus on making this the best freshman season that I can. And then when it gets done, I’ll see where I am.’ And, again, that’s one of Jarrett’s real strengths is the ability to be present, be in the moment, not get too caught up in the past and the future.”

That mindset paid off for Allen. He played and started in 33 games during that 2016-17 season, averaging 13.4 points, 8.4 rebounds and 1.6 blocks per game. He shot 56.6 percent from the field and 56.4 percent from the free-throw line. Allen’s production in February was particularly impressive. Over eight games, he averaged 17.8 points, 7.5 rebounds and 1.3 blocks in 35 minutes en route to earning Big 12 All-Rookie and All-Conference Third Team honors.


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It wasn’t until the Big 12 Conference Tournament that Allen knew he had the potential to be an NBA player. He just wanted to play basketball and be a college student, but those conversations quickly changed.

Allen decided to test the draft waters in 2017, and he was selected 22nd by the Brooklyn Nets.

“There was no doubt in my mind,” Smart said. “I think there are some people through the draft process, and even before that, that maybe miscalculated the drive, and hunger and passion for being great that he had, and has, inside of him. That’s a great lesson. … You don’t have to be like a rah, rah, person to be extremely internally driven. And I’ve always really respected Jarrett’s seriousness for being great. And you see it now with the Cavs.”

Allen takes off his warmup jacket, balls it up and slides the jacket toward the baseline as the starting five take the floor. He runs off the court to fist-bump security guards, ball boys and PR personnel. He heads back toward the court and goes down the line of the coaching staff and his teammates, fist-bumping or hugging everyone along the way. When he gets to the scorer’s table, Allen turns and looks towards the top of the arena, where Cavs bilingual play-by-play announcer Rafa El Alcalde sits, and waves. They call it their space salute.

Allen then heads to the circle at the center of the court for tipoff.

It’s a pregame ritual he began in Brooklyn with the Nets, wanting to get everyone involved before tipoff. After he was traded to Cleveland in 2021, he continued that tradition.

“It just started with showing everybody love, I truly do think everybody’s a part of it,” Allen explained. “It’s just something I do to get everybody hyped for the game, and obviously it helps me feel more hyped for it, it gets me going.”
Jarrett Allen and Cavaliers assistant coach Antonio Lang (Jim Poorten / NBAE via Getty Images)

While many players around the league don’t always stay in their markets in the offseason, Allen liked the familiarity of Cleveland and worked out at Cleveland Clinic Courts during the summer of 2021 while awaiting a potential contract extension with the Cavs.

“I genuinely like Cleveland,” Allen said. “I like the coaches, I like playing here, playing for the team. So it really wasn’t that hard of a decision to come back here and work out.”

During that summer, Allen relied on Lang to take his game to new heights. After Allen took an allotted amount of time off, Lang was back in Cleveland working with Allen on July 1.

“One thing about him, he’s really set in his ways, which is good. So it’s my job to get him out of his ways sometimes,” Lang said. “But he won’t play in the summer. Only time he’ll play is when it’s organized, where he’s playing the right way. But he comes in, I don’t have to tell him to get his conditioning. He gets his conditioning.

“So he’s just rare, as far as knowing who he is and when he needs to work.”

Allen was traded to Cleveland in January 2021 as part of a four-team deal that sent James Harden to the Nets. Allen was in the final year of his contract and eligible for a new contract that offseason. His success in Cleveland, and the immediate chemistry on the court with Darius Garland, further cemented his long-term fit with the Cavs. In the first 44 games that tandem was on the court together following the trade, the Cavs had a defensive rating of 105.3, and an offensive rating of 111.9.

But there was an adjustment period for Allen.

“It did take some growing,” Allen said. “It’s not a good perception of Cleveland around the league, that’s just the honest truth. Nobody sees Cleveland as like, ‘Oh, I want to go there.’ But once I got here, it was like, I do want to be here. I thought that I just fit in well.”

Allen’s offensive game has taken a leap during his tenure in Cleveland. It’s not by accident. That was the Cavs’ collective objective for Allen during the 2021 offseason.

After the Cavs traded for Allen, Cavaliers coach J.B. Bickerstaff noted Allen’s ability to finish, how he caught the ball in the middle of the floor in pick-and-roll, and how he had great balance and footwork. If a player has good balance and footwork, then there is a potential to be a strong post player.

“I think through his career, he had a specific role and expectedly so with the guys that he was playing with,” Bickerstaff said last season. “There was a realization, I think, inside of him and with this group, that there was more there. And we kept talking about how he hadn’t reached his ceiling, he hadn’t reached his peak. And he was open to that. He put the work in and the time in to continue to improve his skills.

“But then there’s this quiet confidence about him, that he believes that he can dominate games while being who he is.”

Last season, Allen did just that. He dominated on both ends of the floor protecting the rim and being an offensive threat. He was named an All-Star for the first time in his career, and represented the Cavs during All-Star weekend. Despite Allen missing 17 games post-All-Star break due to finger injury, he ended the season averaging a double-double of 16.1 points and 10.8 rebounds per game.

He picked up where he left off in the early days of the 2022-23 season. Through the first 10 games, Allen is averaging 13.5 points and 12.2 rebounds per game. He continues to play an integral part of Cleveland’s early success with his rim protection and presence in the paint.

“He’s a Defensive Player of the Year candidate every single year,” Bickerstaff said during a recent postgame press conference. “And I think it’s time that we acknowledge that.”

When I posed the question, “Who is Jarrett Allen?” He paused to think.

“I like to think I’m just a normal person,” Allen said. “I don’t know how else to describe it, I’m a normal person. I play basketball. Obviously, I’m a professional at basketball. I love playing basketball. It’s not my life. But it is one of the biggest things I do right now. And I have a lot of interests.”

Those interests – from computers, space, NASA, baking, plants, Wes Anderson films, Pokemon and others – are what help him relate to so many people in his life. They ground him. It’s why the fans in Cleveland have fallen in love with Allen so quickly.

Those in his life, from his family members to the coaches in different phases of his career, know who Allen is. Quiet. Soft-spoken. A leader by example. Intelligent. Curious. Witty. Intellectual.

“There’s not too many guys who think the way he thinks at his age,” Lang said. “I definitely didn’t. So it’s always refreshing.

“I just think he’s a special human being. I think it’s just hard to find guys like him.”
"I've suffered a great many tragedies in my life....most of them never happened". Mark Twain

Re: Cleveland Cavaliers

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BICKERSTAFF PRAISES BROWN

Brown worked under Bickerstaff's father, Bernie, as a video coordinator.

''It's awesome (he's a head coach) because I have known Mike since I was 13,'' Bickerstaff said. ''He worked for my dad as a video coordinator when I was growing up. There's no better person than Mike Brown. You don't find people (like that) in our business.''
"I've suffered a great many tragedies in my life....most of them never happened". Mark Twain