Cavs’ Jarrett Allen drawing interest from playoff contenders, including Pelicans

Nobody in the Cavaliers’ front office is feeling desperate to make a splashy trade at the moment, it seems. But that won’t keep other teams from calling.

And call they will.

For instance, the New Orleans Pelicans have interest in center Jarrett Allen, according to Jake Fischer of Yahoo Sports. 

All this trade buzz surrounding the Cavs started to occur when it was revealed that Darius Garland (jaw) and Evan Mobley (knee) would miss a significant amount of time. As we relayed here, teams reportedly started calling about Donovan Mitchell right after Garland and Mobley went down.

But at the moment, the Cavs don’t appear to be considering trades involving their core pieces. Allen fits such a description.

Here is what Fischer wrote:

“It’s easy to drop Jarrett Allen from the pantheon of NBA centers, what with the two-way brilliance of Embiid and Nikola Jokic, Domantas Sabonis‘ All-NBA orchestration in Sacramento and Rudy Gobert‘s resurgence as the game’s greatest rim protector. Yet Allen remains high on that proverbial list, with two years remaining on a five-year, $100 million contract that will draw, and has drawn, plenty of interest from playoff contenders like the New Orleans Pelicans, league sources told Yahoo Sports.”

Interestingly, Pelicans head of basketball operations David Griffin used to be Cavs general manager, meaning he was once the boss of current Cavs president of basketball operations Koby Altman.

Anyway, will the Cavs trade Allen, Mitchell or any of their other core pieces during the season? It doesn’t seem likely. Despite all the injuries, the Cavs sit in second place in the Central Division (behind Milwaukee) and in sixth in the Eastern Conference, just two games back of Orlando four fourth, the seed Cleveland finished with last year.