Jarrett Allen opens up on the harsh criticism he received for not playing through his rib injury

Cleveland Cavaliers center Jarrett Allen missed time during the playoffs in the 2023-24 season with a rib injury, one that former teammate Marcus Morris Sr. appeared to think he should have played through.

Allen explained how much worse his rib injury was than people originally thought during the Cavs’ annual media day on Monday.

“It takes a lot more to get under my skin,” Allen said in response to Morris’ and others’ harsh words.

“One funny thing that I always laugh at, you never understand how bad a rib injury is until it happens to you. I was looking at other people, ‘Oh, it can’t be that bad.’ It finally happened to me and I’m like, ‘Oh damn, this sucks.’”

Allen played in the first four games of Cleveland’s first-round series against the Orlando Magic, putting up 21 points and nine rebounds in Game 4, but he did not play again the rest of the postseason.

The one-time All-Star’s absence certainly hurt the Cavs, who ended up getting knocked out in the second round of the postseason by the Boston Celtics.

“I couldn’t sleep right,” Allen said Monday. “You roll over, you wake up with pain in the side. It didn’t finally go down until two weeks after the season. It’s just pain for the whole time you try to do anything, so I mean now I’m fine and I’m fully recovered. It was just a rough couple of months.”

During the playoffs, Allen was listed as questionable with the injury, but he never ended up suiting up. The Cavs called the injury a “rib contusion” at the time, but president of basketball operations Koby Altman referred to Allen’s injury as a “broken” rib after the season ended.

“I think that definitely contributed to the skepticism of the injury,” Allen said. “Now that it’s out, looking at the CT scan, you can still see the piece of bone that’s still floating in my body somewhere, so it was definitely a worse injury than people thought.

“You don’t understand until you go through it. But I feel like I’m very sure of myself. I feel like I’m very understanding of if I was able to play, I would play. I played every single game that season that I could, barring the injury, and if I could have, I would’ve.”

While Allen’s injury wasn’t ideal for the Cavs in the 2023-24 season, it didn’t stop the big man from inking a contract extension with the franchise this offseason.

“I like it here,” Allen said. “I like the city. I like the people here. It’s easy to say in front of everybody just to hype everybody up, but I truly do genuinely like it here and I believe in it here. I’ve put in three years, three and a half years to try to see this team succeed and genuinely happy that they’ve put their trust in me for another whatever years.”

Before he went down in the playoffs, Allen was averaging 17.0 points, 13.8 rebounds, 1.3 assists, 1.3 steals and 1.0 block per game in four playoff games against Orlando.

He had one of his best regular seasons of his career in the 2023-24 campaign as well, averaging 16.5 points (a career-high), 10.5 rebounds, 2.7 assists and 1.1 blocks per game. Allen was extremely durable, playing 77 of 82 regular season games for Cleveland.

Hopefully, Allen’s rib injury is a thing of the past and he’ll be able to lead the Cavs back to the playoffs in the 2024-25 campaign.