How the Cavs emerged as contenders with their supersized frontcourt

When the Knicks take the floor inside Rocket Mortgage FieldHouse on Saturday, with the Cleveland crowd in free T-shirts and Donovan Mitchell wearing Cavaliers wine and gold, New York’s attempt to land Mitchell from the Utah Jazz this past summer will set the backdrop for a compelling first-round playoff series. But there is another blockbuster trade, mind you, involving an All-Star guard and a team based in New York, which is responsible for the opposite end of Cleveland’s vaunted starting lineup: All-Star center Jarrett Allen and second-year forward Evan Mobley.

Let’s travel back to January 2021, after James Harden requested a trade from the Rockets, but before Harden was officially dealt out of Houston. The Sixers, we know, with former Rockets lead executive Daryl Morey at the helm, were offering Ben Simmons as the centerpiece of their Harden package. The Brooklyn Nets, then equipped with Kevin Durant and Kyrie Irving, were dangling an offer for Harden that featured Allen and Caris LeVert, in addition to the hoard of draft capital the Rockets ultimately accepted.

There was one problem. The Rockets front office did not covet Allen, league sources told Yahoo Sports, preferring the Nets to move Allen to another team and reroute a first-round pick back to Houston instead. The Rockets eventually flipped LeVert, in his own right, to Indiana for Victor Oladipo. And Houston, sources said, did not foresee Allen as an optimal frontcourt fit next to the Rockets’ starting center at the time, Christian Wood. Plus, with Allen set to reach restricted free agency that August, Houston also did not want to invest the type of capital at that position, which Allen eventually commanded, signing a five-year, $100 million deal. There are plenty of executives around the NBA who’ve grown queasy at the rising prices for big men not named Joel Embiid and Nikola Jokić. There are also plenty of executives who would like to have Allen.

So the Nets took to the phones. Brooklyn tried to come up with a first-round pick without sacrificing the 22-year-old shot blocker, sources said, but it became clear Allen was the only piece on the Nets' roster, outside of Durant and Irving, who commanded that type of value on the trade market. Brooklyn wasn’t just going to give Allen away, though. The Nets saw this evolution of the Harden trade negotiations as a way to offload Taurean Prince’s $12.6 million salary as well.

Toronto had shown past interest in Allen, and league officials pegged the Raptors as a potential bogeyman to throw him an offer sheet in free agency. Cleveland, too, had been monitoring Allen for quite some time. When Durant and Irving joined forces and chose Brooklyn as their destination in 2019 free agency, with close friend DeAndre Jordan coming along, the Cavaliers called Brooklyn to gauge Allen’s availability, sources told Yahoo Sports. That next summer, leading up to the 2020 NBA Draft, Cleveland called Brooklyn once again to check on Allen, sources said. Cleveland officials wanted the Nets’ leadership to know if they were ever open to moving Allen, they should remember to dial back the Cavs. And dial Brooklyn did.

Cleveland held a 2022 first-round pick from Milwaukee, plus the expiring contract of Dante Exum that would satisfy another Rockets mandate: not returning any long-term salary, sources told Yahoo Sports. The Cavaliers saw Allen as the rim protector and rim runner they needed to support Darius Garland and his running mate at the time, Collin Sexton, whom Cleveland eventually included in its package for Mitchell. And Cleveland was eager for the opportunity to re-sign Allen for the coming years, especially at the cost of the Bucks’ selection, which resulted as the No. 24 pick. (Houston would end up trading the selection back to Milwaukee, as part of the 2021 trade deadline deal that sent P.J. Tucker to the Bucks before their title run.) Cleveland and Brooklyn haggled enough to where the Cavaliers sent a 2024 second-rounder back to the Nets in exchange for Allen.

In the end, Harden became a Net. That Bucks selection from Cleveland brought the Rockets’ total draft asset return to five unprotected first-round picks for their bearded All-Star, plus three years of unprotected first-round swap rights with Brooklyn, while taking back Oladipo, Exum as well as Rodions Kurucs from the Nets. For a front office prioritizing future draft ammunition, Houston did haul in a substantially large yield.

The Cavaliers had their center of the future, and the Rockets proceeded into a rebuild flush with draft capital. The losses piled and piled, enough for Houston to finish with the league’s worst record and inherit a 14% chance at landing the No. 1 pick in that June’s NBA Draft. On lottery night, the Rockets slid down to the No. 2 pick, however, as Detroit’s pingpong balls came out of the machine and landed the Pistons the first selection. Even with Allen in tow, Cleveland’s own rebuild from LeBron James’ 2018 departure was still in full swing, and lady luck left the Cavaliers with the No. 3 pick, one slot behind Houston.

Enter Evan Mobley.

Detroit absolutely considered Mobley — a string bean out of USC who flashed two-way potential scouts weren’t afraid of comparing to the likes of Chris Bosh and even Tim Duncan — for the top pick. Cade Cunningham, the supersized floor general from Oklahoma State was also largely viewed as the top prospect in that year’s class, ever since talent evaluators saw Cunningham play with Team USA’s youth squads. Either way, Cleveland was confident, and even knew, that Houston was going to leave one of Cunningham or Mobley on the table for the Cavaliers’ third pick.

Cleveland had tried to book Jalen Green for a pre-draft visit to Northeast Ohio, but Green’s representatives informed the Cavaliers he was only working out for the Pistons and Rockets, sources said. Green’s camp would not even agree to a Zoom call. And when the Cavaliers contacted the Rockets, Houston was candid. The Rockets were set on their guy. They wanted the uber-athletic combo guard from the G League Ignite. It wasn’t long before rival front offices wrote Green to the Rockets in proverbial Sharpie on the whiteboards in war rooms across the league.

The Cavaliers sighed some relief. There was nothing stopping Houston from selecting Mobley at No. 2 and holding him hostage, although there are few lead decision-makers willing to take such a risk, gambling that a rival team would be willing to pay their ransom. It is certainly not a means of doing business that generates goodwill for future dealmaking in the NBA’s fixed marketplace. Cleveland and Houston did connect for another trade before that 2021 deadline in addition to the Harden four-teamer, in which the Cavaliers sent Kevin Porter Jr. to the Rockets.

Alas, Mobley was there for the Cavaliers at No. 3, joining Allen in the frontcourt that suddenly appeared quite fortified for Garland and whichever combo guard joined him over the coming seasons. That, of course, became Mitchell. And here Cleveland stands, the fourth seed in the Eastern Conference against the fifth-seed New York Knicks, in the postseason games all these superstar trades are designed to impact the most.