Cavs: Where does Jarrett Allen rank among the league’s centers?

Where does Jarrett Allen rank among the league’s centers? Tier 1 – MVP candidates

The 2020-21 NBA season saw something of a renaissance among centers, with three of the league’s biggest men finishing Top 10 in MVP voting. They took the three All-NBA center spots, and are three of the six centers who will make more than Allen this next season.

Nikola Jokic won the MVP award, the point guard and center for the Denver Nuggets’ offense. He is one of the league’s best post players, can shoot from outside and is one of the league’s best passers as a near-seven-footer.

Joel Embiid was the MVP runner-up and the two-way linchpin for the top seed in the Eastern Conference. He averaged 28.5 points and 10.6 rebounds per game this past season, destroying opposing centers in the post and hitting 37.7 percent of his 3-pointers when he stepped outside. Allen has nothing of the offensive creation that Jokic and Embiid have and thus will never be a serious MVP candidate.

Rudy Gobert is Allen’s closest comp in the top tier, a screen-setter and rim-runner on offense who protects the rim on defense. Gobert is the best of that archetype in the league and one of the best in NBA history, setting frequent and crushing screens and stretching the court vertically by sprinting to the rim. He is the reigning and a three-time Defensive Player of the Year. All of that, and Gobert finished 10th in MVP voting. Without the offensive counting stats that level is just not there.

Allen is very clearly not in and not close to this tier.