Jarrett Allen has become one of the easier Cavaliers to take for granted, and that says more about the way Cleveland is built than it does about Allen himself.
He has only one All-Star nod on his resume, and it came before Evan Mobley rose to his current level and before Donovan Mitchell arrived. Since then, Allen has often been treated like the odd man out among Cleveland’s stars.
He’s been the first name mentioned in trade chatter, he’s taken heat for playoff losses, and his blunt postgame honesty has not always won him friends. Too often, the conversation around him starts with what he supposedly isn’t.
That misses the point. Allen is still a very good two-way center, and in a league that keeps inflating the price of size, the Cavaliers should probably be louder about how well they’ve got him paid.
The market made that easier to see this offseason.
After a long standoff, All-NBA center Jalen Duren and the Detroit Pistons agreed to a five-year, $200 million deal that will pay him $40 million per year. Duren was eligible for even more after making an All-NBA team this past year, but even that caveat doesn’t change how sharply his price jumped compared with where he likely would have been a year ago.
The Los Angeles Lakers also dove into the center market, pulling off a sign-and-trade for former Utah Jazz big man Walker Kessler. That move cost them two first-round picks and two first-round swaps, and it came with a four-year, $130 million contract that pays Kessler an average of $32.5 million.
It wasn’t just the headline names, either. Teams handed out money to centers all over the place this offseason.
Even backups like Jock Landale landed $14 million on a one-year deal. Jusuf Nurkic is making $11 million per season, and the source material makes clear he is not a Top-30 center in the league.
The message is obvious: everybody wants bigs, and everybody is paying up.
Against that backdrop, Allen looks like a bargain.
He’s set to make $28 million this season and will average $30 million over the next three years on the three-year, $90 million extension that just began. That puts him 13th among centers in average annual value. While other teams are scrambling and overspending to secure size, Cleveland already has its anchor on a contract that doesn’t crush the rest of the roster.
And Allen still brings plenty of value on the floor. He protects the rim, holds up in space, rebounds, finishes around the basket and remains a strong roll man for guards. He does it without much fuss, and he accepts whatever role the team asks him to play.
In a market this heated, that kind of stability matters. The Cavaliers don’t have to chase a center at the top of the price curve.
They already have one. Jarrett Allen may not always get the credit, but the value is right there.
In Other News...
Peyton Watson Opened Up About Why Cleveland Won Him Over
Peyton Watson had no shortage of options before settling on Cleveland, with multiple teams in the mix and the Lakers among those pursuing him. Instead, he landed with the Cavaliers on a four-year, $88 million contract and quickly settled into training camp with the kind of enthusiasm teams hope to see from a major addition. For a club trying to keep building on its defensive identity, the fit was obvious from the outside.
Watsons arrival matters because Cleveland already has Jarrett Allen and Evan Mobley anchoring the front line, giving the Cavaliers a chance to make opponents work for everything in the paint and on the perimeter. Watson is expected to add another layer to that group, and his early commitment to the team only strengthens the sense that this was more than a simple free-agent decision. The Cavaliers wanted a defender, and they appear to have landed one who believes he found the right place, too. [Read more 🡒]
Peyton Watson Sounds Ready To Be Exactly What The Cavs Need
Peyton Watson arrives in Cleveland with the kind of profile the Cavaliers have been chasing, a young wing with defensive juice and enough upside to matter on both ends. The Cavs brought him in from Denver as part of a five-team trade that sent Dennis Schrder, Max Strus and a 2031 first-round pick the other way, a clear signal they were willing to pay for a player they believe can help shape their next step.
Watson has already sounded as if he understands the assignment, saying he is fully committed to the Cavaliers and sees Cleveland as the best place for both his basketball and cultural development. For a team still trying to push past its Eastern Conference Finals ceiling, that blend of buy-in and potential matters, because the Cavs are banking on Watson to grow into a piece who can add scoring, defend multiple spots and fit a roster with higher ambitions than just another good regular season. [Read more 🡒]
Kenny Atkinson Just Put Clevelands Expectations Under A Brighter Spotlight
ESPNs latest look at the leagues most pressure-packed coaching situations included Kenny Atkinson among five NBA coaches facing heightened expectations, a reminder that the Cavaliers are no longer being evaluated like a team simply trying to take the next step. With the roster built to chase bigger goals, the standards in Cleveland now come with the kind of urgency that leaves little room for slow starts or prolonged growing pains.
Atkinsons spot on that list reflects the larger challenge in front of him: guiding a team with real ambitions while balancing star power, inevitable roster turnover, and the constant demand to keep the season pointed toward the playoffs. For Cleveland, the attention is another sign that the conversation has moved beyond progress and into results, where the pressure only grows once the chase shifts from improvement to expectation. [Read more 🡒]