The Cavs will be monitoring Allen’s minutes during their final five games.
Cleveland Cavaliers center Jarrett Allen has made it clear that he wants to play all 82 games.
“I like the number, it’s nothing special,” Allen joked when asked about it last month. “It’s good to play all 82. I just want to look on Basketball-Reference and see 82 out of 82.”
The Cavs are going to let him play every game, but they’re still going to try to limit his overall workload. Friday’s game against the San Antonio Spurs was an example of that. Allen played 15 and a half minutes in the first half, but didn’t come out of the locker room after halftime.
According to Chris Fedor of cleveland.com, this is part of an ongoing plan. How much Allen plays will be “circumstantial” depending on the game, but he is expected to receive “short stints and may not play many second halves, if any.”
How effective a compromise this will be is debatable. Allen will still be preparing for and playing just as hard as he normally would in a game. He’s just doing it for less time. Fewer minutes are helpful, but doing this still invites more risk of injury than not playing at all.
It’ll be interesting to see if this plan gets adjusted over the final five games. While the Cavs have the top spot in the conference nearly locked down, the Oklahoma City Thunder’s recent loss to the Houston Rockets opens up the door for the Cavs to still secure the best record in the league and home-court advantage through the NBA Finals.
Right now, the Cavs are two games behind the Thunder, but they do have the tiebreaker over them based on having a better winning percentage in their own conference.
Still, the number one goal for this team is to enter the playoffs healthy. Trying to lessen Allen’s minutes load is a part of that. We’ll see how the team handles the rest of their core players during these last five games.