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Jarrett Allen: Nice Head of Hair

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Who is All-Star Jarrett Allen's Favorite DS9 Character?

  • The Emissary, Captain Benjamin Lafayette Sisko

    Votes: 3 8.1%
  • Evil Cat Suited Kira

    Votes: 7 18.9%
  • Weyoun

    Votes: 0 0.0%
  • Legate Damar

    Votes: 1 2.7%
  • Quark

    Votes: 6 16.2%
  • Odo

    Votes: 7 18.9%
  • Gul Dukat

    Votes: 4 10.8%
  • Chancellor of the Klingon High Council Jim Chones

    Votes: 6 16.2%
  • Elim Garak

    Votes: 7 18.9%
  • There are too many great characters!

    Votes: 1 2.7%

  • Total voters
    37
That’s a weird way to look at it. The question isn’t how many there are but how valuable each type of player is. Also Markkanens prototype is rare too - how many bigs are there who can play OK defense against 3-4-5s while putting up 40% from 3 on volume shooting and scoring 25 ppg? Not a ton of them
So, if the assumption is we are replacing Allen in the Mitch trade its a question of our current DG/Mitch/Okoro/Mobley/Allen lineup vs DG/Mitch/Lauri/Mobley/filler lineup or DG/Mitch/Okoro/Lauri/Mobley.

I think the current lineup is clearly better and will be for the foreseeable future. Several reasons:

1. Allen/Mobley gives us two rim protectors. There are very few teams who can claim that and none of the others have two rim protectors who are switchable. This is the key to not a good or even great but an elite defense. Without Allen, the defensive floor and ceiling of this team utterly collapses. This should be the end of the debate right here, but there are more points to be made.

2. Mobley is not ready for being a full time 5 and may never be. He certainly was not at the start of the season. He has a high center of gravity which really makes him more of a huge wing than a true banging 5. You will always need a true big next to him. To draw the comp to TD, Duncan always had another big man next to him in his 20s - starting with Robinson and eventually guys like Fabricio Oberto and Nazr Mohammed. Allen is several steps above those guys other than 99 Robinson. Why sell low on a top 7 center in the league? (not targeted at you but the others in this thread clamoring to turn Allen into RJ Barrett and a 2nd rounder)

3. Lauri at the 4 lineups were horrible - we saw this last year with Allen out. The offense was slightly better last year, but we got mauled on defense. Lauri has plus length and size at the 3 on defense, but does not have spectacular instincts or anything on that side. He was a neutral defender last year who struggled with faster smaller guards. That is not a knock on him. However, you lose all that advantage when he moves down to the 4. He doesn't have the hops or instincts to provide value as a secondary rim protector. He can get pushed around by burlier 4s and suddenly there is a gaping hole in the defense. Even this year, Utah was kicking butt when they had Lauri and Vandy crossmatching at 3/4 next to Walker Kessler, a similar structure to what we were doing last year. Without Vandy, Lauri is going to have a much harder time on D.

4. 2023 Utah Lauri would not have happened in Cleveland. Obviously, 2022 Lauri was a much weaker player than this. His work in the summer with the national team suggested a leap was coming. But the 25 ppg + efficiency all-star doesnt exist in Cleveland. With no Mitchell trade he is still the 3rd or 4th option, and with an Allen/Mitchell swap, he is a more marginalized version of that. He might have been able to do 17-18 ppg on good efficiency and let us move a top 10 offense to top 7 or so but is that worth the cost of going from a top 2 defense to barely league average? I think no.

5. To expand a bit more on how Utah uses him, Lauri mostly gets value as an off ball scorer for them in a motion offense. He has been empowered over the to let loose when open and if there is a closeout he attacks the rim like a madman. As a 7ft wing, he can make up for his mediocre handle by being huge and powering through wings and guards. That level of dynamism is beyond JBB. Instead of complaining about Okoro/Wade sitting in the corner, we would complain about Lauri and how the opposing team keeps hiding Ja Morant and Trae on him because Lauri wouldn't know if he was allowed to attempt shots.

Now on the more general point of how valuable a type of player is. What does each type of player offer in a vacuum? A shooter provides you spacing on offense since the D can't just sag off of them. This is a multiplicative benefit as more shooters = more space for your playmakers to get things going. A mobile rim protector lets you run a versatile defensive scheme by letting you run multiple coverages (drop, at the level, switch, pre-switch) without worrying about being exploited in a particular way. The mobile part also means you don't have to worry as much about switch hunting the way Harden and Bron ran the league in the late 10s.

I think it is hard to make a claim that one type of player is more valuable than the other in a vacuum, but the above comp was mainly to illustrate what both types of roles enable. It is not a direct comparison since one is primarily an offensive role and the other a defensive one, and as we know, defensive value is very hard to quantify. And of course, the specifics of players will always matter more than an abstract shooter or abstract mobile rim protector.

In terms of rarity, there are clearly more shooter types than mobile rim protectors. You have guys like Bertans and Duncan Robinson who are verifiable movement shooters languishing with horrible contracts that teams felt were worth it. So clearly shooters are valuable but they are not so valuable that teams will burn assets to pick up guys on bad contracts. How many truly mobile rim protectors are there? Off the top of my head: Allen, Mobley, JJJ, Rob Williams III, Nic Claxton, Vanderbilt, Giannis, Bam Adebayo, Draymond Green. I am certainly forgetting some guys, but it is not many. Of those guys that are pure centers, I think only Bam has a case to be better than Jarrett Allen. So clearly, this is a role that we need more of today.

But lets look forward at little bit. The team archetype that was most powerful in the late Warriors stretch (ie. 2015-20 or so), excluding the unique construction of GSW themselves, was a heliocentric spread PnR offense with one decision maker and multiple shooters and a switch heavy defense. Think microball, Lukaball, even the Joker Nuggets to an extent.

The league has started to trend in a different direction now. Now the idea is to have multiple playmakers and run multiple actions where the ball moves laterally from one side to the other. You may run a strong side PnR on one side of the floor while you have a wing sprint off a pindown on the weak side. Or you have multiple DHOs within one offensive possession. Or you see a lot of Spain PnR. What lets this work? Having multiple bigger players who are decision makers that are able to move the ball. Miami, Boston, Phx, Sac are all built like this. Even the young developing teams are building towards this idea - look at OKC, Orl and Det. All three have multiple bigger players who are the focal points of their offense.

The best way to survive against something like this is to have versatile defenders who can cover multiple types of players without giving up size at the rim. This is why the pairing of Allen/Mobley is so valuable and why I would prefer to keep a versatile defense over another shooter overall. Don't get me wrong, I would love to add more shooting. But I don't think it is worth sacrificing our defense to get a little more space.

As a bit of a digression from the above, I really wish our offense looked more like what I described in the second paragraph above. Yes spacing makes some of these things difficult, but JBB has done a very bad job of enabling a lot of motion. With his extremely short leash, its harder for some bench guys to ever get in a rhythm while others who could be doing more aren't because they are told not to. I think a lot of the things we complain about go away if we get a coach who understands Xs and Os better than a 5th grader who is obsessed with the late 90s offenses

This post ended up being way longer than I intended and bounces around on a few topics, but hopefully everything is coherent up there. What is everyone's thoughts on this?

TL:;DR - Jarrett Allen lets us be a top 2 defense. Better to maintain a top 10 offense and top 2 defense than a top 8 offense and a 15th rank defense.
 
Too many games this season where he’s been invisible…not good!
 
People understand that centers like Allen need someone to feed them in order to eat, right?

In addition to Allen getting yanked early due to phantom fouls, JBB decided to play with one big fir for most of the night and Mobley got the lion's share of those minutes.

The Celtics were clearly content with Mitchell getting his. They made a concerted effort to get the ball out off Garland's hands and that hurts Allen.

Mitchell had 34 shots, many really early in the shot clock, and 4 assists tonight. Garland took 17 shots and has 12 assists. That's more than a little out of whack.
 
People understand that centers like Allen need someone to feed them in order to eat, right?

In addition to Allen getting yanked early due to phantom fouls, JBB decided to play with one big fir for most of the night and Mobley got the lion's share of those minutes.

The Celtics were clearly content with Mitchell getting his. They made a concerted effort to get the ball out off Garland's hands and that hurts Allen.

Mitchell had 34 shots, many really early in the shot clock, and 4 assists tonight. Garland took 17 shots and has 12 assists. That's more than a little out of whack.

That doesn't explain why Kornet out-rebounded him in less minutes. A performance like this where the opposing bigs rotation is Luke Kornet, Mike Muscala, and the corpse of Blake Griffin is inexcusable. I don't know what his deal is lately. Maybe he's wearing down with the short rotation. They have to play him and Mobley alot because there is nobody else. Stevens clearly shows how an energy big like Moses Brown to eat up some minutes would do, but it seems management and coaching are okay with wearing the starters down.
 
Something hasn't been right about him all year. He doesn't have the focus or something. He had to rebound no matter what and he isn't doing that
 
That doesn't explain why Kornet out-rebounded him in less minutes. A performance like this where the opposing bigs rotation is Luke Kornet, Mike Muscala, and the corpse of Blake Griffin is inexcusable. I don't know what his deal is lately. Maybe he's wearing down with the short rotation. They have to play him and Mobley alot because there is nobody else. Stevens clearly shows how an energy big like Moses Brown to eat up some minutes would do, but it seems management and coaching are okay with wearing the starters down.
First off, picking up ticky tack fouls early can absolutely impact a big man's aggressiveness and Allen had two early in the first quarter and a third early in the third quarter. The Celtics came into that game looking to get him into foul trouble and with that crew it worked. He only played 25 minutes in a game that went to overtime.

Moreover, reducing a big man's offensive role to setting picks and rebounding will inevitably impact his motor and his role has taken a big hit this season. When Mitchell takes jumpers early in transition before his teammates are in position to rebound, it's a wasted possession when he misses. When the guards shoot immediately after the Allen pick, he's not in position to rebound.
 
Something hasn't been right about him all year. He doesn't have the focus or something. He had to rebound no matter what and he isn't doing that
Amongst NBA, he’s 9th in win shares, 2nd in defensive win shares, top-50 box plus/minus, top-35 in defensive box plus/minus, top 35 in VORP and 2nd in defensive rating..

I think he’s doing just fine.. :chuckle:
 
That doesn't explain why Kornet out-rebounded him in less minutes. A performance like this where the opposing bigs rotation is Luke Kornet, Mike Muscala, and the corpse of Blake Griffin is inexcusable. I don't know what his deal is lately. Maybe he's wearing down with the short rotation. They have to play him and Mobley alot because there is nobody else. Stevens clearly shows how an energy big like Moses Brown to eat up some minutes would do, but it seems management and coaching are okay with wearing the starters down.

You know what *does* explain low rebounding numbers for a big? When the men they guard are perimeter oriented. He spent many minutes guarding Mike Muscala and Grant Williams, in addition to being switched onto guards/wings. When bigs are taken away from the basket, their rebounding numbers tend to drop.

The Cavaliers outrebounded the Celtics, despite JA being in foul trouble and pulled away from the basket.
 
Tonight proves we don’t need Ja! Trade him for the best wing we can get!
 

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