Cavs: Best and worst-case scenarios for Jarrett Allen this season

Cavs: Worst-case scenario for Jarrett Allen

The potential outcomes for Allen are not all sunshine-and-roses, unfortunately. While Allen could absolutely take another step forward given his age, player growth is not always linear, and the Cavs did make moves this offseason that could limit Allen’s development.

Chief among them is drafting one 7-footer and signing another to a long-term deal. Allen is suddenly in a crowded frontcourt when you also add in Kevin Love, the team’s highest-paid player, and Dean Wade, sneakily part of the Cavs’ best lineup last season. There are only so many minutes to go around.

Let’s spin this out into a realistic and unfortunate worst-case scenario for Allen. The team keeps Allen in the starting lineup to begin the year but limits his minutes in order to find time for Evan Mobley and Love at the 5. With Darius Garland making a leap offensively and Collin Sexton around, the shot attempts flow to the guards and not to the bigs. Allen accordingly averages fewer minutes and fewer shots per-36 minutes than last season, and his scoring dips to around nine points per game.

While Garland and Sexton can shoot, the other most common players Allen is paired with are Ricky Rubio, Isaac Okoro and Lamar Stevens, along with Evan Mobley, who all constrict the spacing around Allen. He tries to compensate by stepping out to the 3-point line more often, and he averages two 3-point attempts per game, but can’t raise his shooting mark above the 31.6 percent he hit last year.

Defensively he is put in a position to fail, as Garland and Sexton continue to be sieves on the perimeter. Mobley has a few highlight blocks, but otherwise is too skinny to stop larger players and fouls easily. Allen has to take responsibility for the entire paint area and is unable to stop teams enough by himself to make a difference. He averages his normal amount of blocks, around 1.2 per game, but the Cavs have a bottom-3 defense.

By late in the season, well out of the play-in race and now trying to angle for a top-3 lottery position, the team finally acknowledges that Mobley and Allen are not a good fit together. Allen is shifted to the bench so that the team can start Lauri Markkanen and Mobley together. That lineup shows some juice and Mobley plays much better with the increased spacing. Allen’s future with the team becomes a major question mark entering the offseason.

Obviously, that’s a tough outcome to swallow, and no one should expect that to play out — yet it is certainly a possibility, just as it is Allen becomes an All-Defense level center and increases his numbers slightly across the board. This season will show us where he lands, likely somewhere in between these extremes, and give us a glimpse of what the future holds.