Last summer the Cleveland Cavaliers looked poised to transition their rebuild, to go from asset accumulation to an attempt to win basketball games. The Cavs drafted a top-3 prospect in Evan Mobley, retained Jarrett Allen, Dean Wade and Lamar Stevens, and added Ricky Rubio and Lauri Markkanen.
That transition went better than anyone expected, and the Cavs finished above .500 with a 44-38 record and the eighth seed in the Eastern Conference. While injuries spurred them to a late-season falter and a loss in the Play-In Tournament, this season was an absolute success.
After a whole season is in the rearview camera, how did the Cavs do in re-signing Jarrett Allen last summer to a $100 million contract?
Now that it is over, we can go back and evaluate the steps taken to put this season together. One of the most important goes back to last summer. Jarrett Allen, acquired midseason as part of the James Harden trade between the Brooklyn Nets and Houston Rockets, was a restricted free agent. The Cavs wasted no time in signing Allen to a five-year, $100 million contract to keep him in Cleveland for a long time.
How does that signing look after a season has past? Does it look like a millstone around the front office’s neck, or an affirmation of their roster successes? Let’s see what we thought then, how the season went and how we would land now with an all-new grade for the deal.
Regrading Jarrett Allen’s contract: What we thought then
Jarrett Allen and the Cavaliers agreed to a new contract just minutes into free agency last summer, and the immediate reactions to the deal came in right after. Here at King James Gospel, we broke down the new contract on three levels: the fit, the value and the opportunity cost.
Evaluating fit, we characterized Allen as a modern big who wouldn’t demand touches, would set hard screens and roll to the rim. That archetype projected to pair well with ball-dominant guards like Collin Sexton and Darius Garland. The downside was that paying Allen meant committing even more team assets (salary and draft capital) to bigs in a league that was downsizing. If Evan Mobley was going to be a long-term center, Allen’s role would either be reduced or he would be traded.
Much more difficult was how the contract came out in looking at value. The Cavs had restricted free agent rights on Allen, and his production to that point had not been earth-shattering. Who were the Cavs bidding against? They paid Allen like a top-6 center, and at the time he was not. We even wrote the line “…even if he improves the gulf between Allen and an All-Star season is wide” which was both true and aged incredibly poorly.
Finally, the opportunity cost of the deal tilted the evaluation back towards the positive. If Allen had walked there was no obvious replacement on the market for him. Locking up Allen gave the Cavs a good player in his prime, and for a team with very limited cap flexibility Allen’s talent level was by far the highest they had access to signing.
In total, then, it was an overpay at a non-premium position for a roster loaded with bigs, but it also meant locking up a young player on the rise for years to come.
Regrading Jarrett Allen’s contract: How this season went
Jarrett Allen did not rest on the laurels of his new contract for even a moment but instead came out as an even better version of what he had given the Cavs the season before after coming over in the Harden trade. Allen proved to be a dynamic partner for Darius Garland on offense and Evan Mobley on defense and earned his first career All-Star selection.
On offense, Allen became one of the league’s best finishers, giving Garland and the team’s other ball-handlers a large target to hit with soft hands that immediately translated into dunks, hooks and floaters. He even developed more of a back-to-basket game to allow the Cavs to take advantage of switching schemes.
Defensively Allen really shone, locking up the rim as the backline complement to Mobley’s roving destruction in front of him. He has excellent footwork and can take away a driving ball-handler while also preventing the lob, the epitome of excellent pick-and-roll defense.
Overall Allen developed into a much better player than last season, and nothing about that rise seemed fluky. Estimated Plus/Minus rated Allen as the 13th-most impactful player this season, between Chris Paul and Karl-Anthony Towns, and FiveThirtyEight’s RAPTOR model placed him 18th. In our year-end grades, we awarded Allen an “A” overall for his growth and two-way impact.
Regrading Jarrett Allen’s contract: Overall Grade
Among all centers in the league, Jarrett Allen’s $20 million salary this season ranked seventh, with four All-NBA contenders (Rudy Gobert, Karl-Anthony Towns, Joel Embiid and Nikola Jokic) and two former All-Stars (Al Horford, Nikola Vucevic) ahead of him. In average annual value over the life of the deal Allen drops slightly to eighth, with Clint Capela jumping him.
For Allen to live up to that deal this season he needed to be a clear top-10 center in the league. Prior to last season we ranked the league’s centers and Allen came in at Tier 4, the “solid starters” category, alongside such names as Horford, Jakob Poetl, Jonas Valanciunas and Christian Wood. That placed him in the 12-15 range.
We will re-rank the centers and find Allen’s place among them, but he has certainly leapt up the list. At the very least he would be in Tier 3, “above-average starters” but he has a chance to creep even further. He’s absolutely in the Top 10 among the league’s centers now, and at only 23 years old he will continue to ascend.
The Cavs almost certainly did not need to spend $100 million to lock Allen up, so at the time they gave up value because of where they projected Allen to grow. He absolutely capitalized on that, making this much more of a fair deal, but it could have been even better.
That being said, keeping the deal flat will mean Allen’s contract takes up an increasingly smaller percentage of the cap every year, and his fit on this team was tremendous. He will never be an MVP-candidate, but there is no reason to think he won’t continue to challenge for All-Star berths and All-Defense selections. Having Allen for four more seasons is a huge asset for the Cavs.
Jarrett Allen is a young center continuing to grow who absolutely earned his contract amount this season. It wasn’t a home run in terms of contract value, but it was fair and will only look better with time. The All-Star center got his money and has now proven himself worthy of it.
Grade: B+