INDEPENDENCE, Ohio — Jarrett Allen is playing at an All-Star level this season. His efforts on both ends of the floor have helped the Cleveland Cavaliers find success even while dealing with the injuries to Darius Garland and Evan Mobley.
But while basketball is life for Allen and is something he loves dearly, it's not everything to the Cavs big man. There's so much more to Allen than seen on the court.
It's well-known by now that Allen is an advocate for STEM—holding a deep interest in science, technology, engineering and math since he was a young boy.
"Probably just growing up, my parents used to always try to get us out to museums, parks, try to teach us math, always had us doing workbooks," Allen said. "My dad worked at Dell when we were younger and he gave us his old 10-year-old laptop for us to just fiddle around with and take apart or do whatever we wanted to."
Allen would take that computer apart, but he also would do the same with his other toys. He wanted to tinker with everything he could.
"I used to always be destructive when I was younger. I don't know why. I used to always take my toys apart. I used to try to mod Nerf Guns to make them shoot faster," Allen laughed.
As Allen grew—and at nearly seven feet tall, he grew a lot—so did that habit of tinkering and modding. He recalled the moment it took a leap from improving his toys to becoming a passion.
"My freshman year of high school I actually ordered the parts to build my own computer," Allen said. "I've built two computers and my main one, I've been upgrading since my freshman year of high school. I got to pick all the parts for it so I got to choose how powerful it was, different RAM, different specs on it. I haven't done that in a while because that stuff's getting expensive and I'm frugal. Not cheap. I'm frugal about spending money on stuff like that."
Allen's frugality is another personality trait not always common among professional athletes—the NBA star does not care about spending money on designer clothing or accessories and even limits his spending on the things he is interested in if he doesn't need them.
"I'm not going to spend $2,000 on a 10% upgrade," Allen said. "That's just me speaking in computer world."
And what's more economical than building your own items instead of buying them? Allen does that, too.
"I like building like little machines. One thing that I use to this day, I built a soil humidifier reader so I know when to water my plants. I don't know why I did that," Allen smiled. "It was an easy weekend project but it's just stuff like that interests me."
The passions Allen has are eclectic. Just about every facet of geek culture makes up Allen's hobbies. From computer builds and STEM to video games, Allen loves it all. He particularly likes games with a story mode—like Pokemon and Zelda.
The Zelda interest even finds itself entwined with his life on the court.
When players score inside Rocket Mortgage FieldHouse, some personalized sound is blasted across the arena. Allen's scoring tune: "The Secret Sound" from "The Legend of Zelda."
"It's one of my favorite Zelda tunes," Allen explained. "It's just a nice little quick jingle to play after I score a basket and it's fun to hear things you love outside of basketball, integrate with basketball."
The sound sparks joy for obvious reasons, and it's become something Allen looks forward to every time he scores—which he's doing in the double-digits in most games lately.
"I'm not gonna lie, I always look out for the sound and sometimes they don't play it. Rocket Mortgage FieldHouse, I'm watching," Allen laughed.
With so many interests, finding time for them all outside of work could be difficult. But Allen has found balance—and it's a balance he truly needs for himself.
"It's easy. We play basketball four hours a day and take away sleep. I still got 12 more hours a day. So I just have a lot of time to tinker or learn, watch videos to learn how to do a new skill. So I have plenty of time for it," Allen said. "I'm always about balance in life. At least for me, I can't; I probably shouldn't say I can't give 100% of my energy [to] basketball all the time. I feel that it's gonna drain me out and burn me out. So it's nice to have something to fall back on that you can just sit, relax and just enjoy your time."
Allen loves basketball. It's his life. It's a passion. But he's more than basketball.
At the end of the day, Allen hopes that the next generation who may look up to him on the court can see that too—and maybe that inspires them to be more than just any one thing as well.
"My thing is...it's a big world. Don't get me wrong, I love basketball, this is my passion, I do it every day. There's so many other things in this world that you can love that you can enjoy to do. So just go out and then explore, it's a magical world out there so enjoy it all— I stole that from Calvin and Hobbes."
