While the Cleveland Cavaliers have four All-Star players, a core quartet of talent, one of them is often trailing the group in the eyes of most fans and media.
Donovan Mitchell is getting MVP buzz. Evan Mobley is the favorite to win Defensive Player of the Year. Darius Garland is having one of the best offensive seasons of all time. All three made the All-Star Game. All three are likely going to be named All-NBA at season's end. All three are on maximum contracts.
Jarrett Allen, however, is quite often Cleveland's forgotten star. He doesn't get to close every game, he doesn't ever score 30 points, he isn't launching 3-pointers. Despite his iconic hair and affable nature, he hasn't caught on as a star sensation as his teammates have.
Ask any fan of the Cavaliers or the NBA who is fourth in the Cleveland star rankings, and you will likely universally get Jarrett Allen -- unless perhaps you include his mother in the poll. Yet now a new stat has been created and it joins Allen's relatives in thinking quite highly of the fro-topped mountain at the center of the Cavaliers' lineup.
ESPN has debuted a new NBA stat
Dean Oliver is considered by many to be the father of the modern analytics movement in basketball. While John Hollinger's "Player Efficiency Rating" launched modern advanced statistics, Oliver's 2004 book "Basketball on Paper" revolutionized how we think about the sport of basketball.
Oliver is now working for ESPN after spending years consulting with and working for a variety of NBA teams. With ESPN he has been developing a new statistic, one that he thinks will better capture the impact each player is having on whether or not their team wins the game.
The statistic is called "Net Points" and it uses play-by-play data to determine just how valuable each player's performance was. It takes into account every shot, rebound, assist, steal, etc and assigns credit and blame to the players on the court.
30 points and 10 rebounds is impressive on the surface, but the player who shot 12-of-15 and added four blocks and no turnovers had a much more positive impact that the player who shot 11-for-26 and had five fouls and six turnovers. That may seem obvious on the surface, but Net Points tries to answer the question of how much more of a positive impact that the first player had over the second. How do you quantify an extra turnover vs fewer rebounds, for example?
Oliver then used Net Points to evaluate the impact of each and every player in the NBA this season. His research and this new statistic have already yielded a variety of interesting insights, but we are going to narrow down on his list of the 10 best players in the NBA according to Net Points.
Checking in at No. 10 on the list is Donovan Mitchell, and that seems about right. Leading the list are Nikola Jokic and Shai Gilgeous-Alexander, which also seems right. Jayson Tatum and Giannis Antetokounmpo also appear in the Top 10. In fact, eight of the Top 10 players in Net Points were All-Stars this season, and No. 7 Domantas Sabonis was likely right on the cut line.
The surprising name on the list, however, is another member of the Cleveland Cavaliers. It's not Evan Mobley, who Oliver said is just outside of the Top 10. It's not Darius Garland, who is Top 10 on offense but negatively impacted by his defense.
Jarrett Allen is a Top-6 Player
It's Jarrett Allen, checking in at No. 6, just ahead of Sabonis and Antetokounmpo. Through the 60 games Allen played that factored into the ranking, he consistently turned in positive performances that built their way to +169 net points.
By comparison, that is more than 22 entire teams in the NBA have accrued this year. The 39-21 Los Angeles Lakers have just +114 net points this season as a team; the Golden State Warriors have 130. The fourth-place Milwaukee Bucks in the East have only 120. Allen has eclipsed them all.
Some of that benefit is because he has strong teammates, but he is putting in the work and making a positive impact on his team. Sometimes that impact is quiet, a 12-point, eight-rebound kind of night. Other times it is loud, like his performance Tuesday night against the Chicago Bulls, where he dominated to the tune of 25 points on 90 percent shooting to go with 17 rebounds, three assists and two steals.
Jarrett Allen is having a star-level season. That is often obscured by his star teammates, but he is playing a key role on a historically good team. One stat, at the very least, has captured his value and is trumpeting it. For the quiet, unassuming, mechanically-minded big man, someone needed to sing his praises.