“I like building little machines,” Cleveland Cavaliers center Jarrett Allen once told a local reporter. He was describing the soil moisture reader he created over a weekend to know when to water his plants. He grew up taking his toys apart, trying to make his Nerf guns stronger. As a child, he broke open one of his father’s old computers to repair it. He built his own house while in high school. That apparently raised flags during the draft process in 2017, and he dropped boards. There were “questions about his commitment” as in New York Times put itIt’s as if curiosity about how things work has nothing to do with basketball. The Brooklyn Nets took him with the twenty-second pick.

The Nets were terrible at the time, a laughing stock, one of the worst teams in the league. They finished the season 20-62 before Allen was drafted and won just a few more games in his rookie year. The team had long ago gambled away their lottery picks and, apparently, their future. But things were already changing, and Allen was part of that change. He is tall and athletic, about seven feet tall (plus afro), with quick hands and feet. He has a unique charisma on the field; hard blocks, emphatic dunks and a certain kind of nonchalance. Other promising under-the-radar players like the crafty Spencer Dinwiddie and the sweet-shooting Caris LeVert were also arriving, and the team had a coach named Kenny Atkinson who was known for his ability to develop young players. There was talk of a changing culture that might sound hopelessly vague. Why cultureAnyway? But it was still hard to deny that something hard to measure made a difference. What a player like Allen offered was not just athleticism and a long wingspan, but also an openness to knowledge and the joy of building something from scratch. “Honestly, my second year there, it had a vibe that we were just going to go out and play, have fun,” Allen said on JJ Redick and Tommy Alter’s podcast about his time in Brooklyn. “So, there’s a clip where we’re just shooting threes. Everyone is dancing on the sidelines. We are having the best time of our lives. Were we the best team? No. But we were having fun, playing hard and winning.” The Nets surprised the league by making the playoffs in Allen’s second and third seasons, but lost in the first round both times.

In 2019, the team added Kyrie Irving and Kevin Durant, two of the biggest stars in the world, to its squad. Before the end of their first season together, Atkinson left the team because he could not gain the trust of Durant and Irving, or perhaps he could not trust them. Shortly after the start of the next season, Allen and LeVert were gone as well, traded as part of a blockbuster four-team trade that brought the Nets. James Harden; Allen went to the Cleveland Cavaliers and LaVert went to the Indiana Pacers. This seemed like a good idea at the time; At least to some people, sometimes.

During the few stretches when all three superstars were healthy and on the court together, the Nets were one of the greatest offensive teams the league has ever seen. But those spells were rare, and the Nets could only win one playoff series before blowing up the bracket. Durant is currently in Arizona, Harden is in Los Angeles, and Irving is in Dallas. The Nets lost fifty games last season and there doesn’t seem to be much hope on the horizon. Allen, meanwhile, has developed into an All-Star caliber player for the Cavaliers. After LeBron James leaves Cleveland Los AngelesThe Cavaliers were just as bad as the Nets in 2018. However, in Allen’s first season with the team, the Cavs reached over five hundred points and made the playoffs the following season. Besides Allen, the Cavs had a roster of stars in Donovan Mitchell, a dynamic, explosive scorer coming from the Utah Jazz, and Evan Mobley, a young big man with high-end talent who was immediately effective, especially on defense. They had a promising point guard in Darius Garland. LeVert arrived from the Pacers to lead the second unit, adding depth to the team. (His tenure with the Pacers was delayed because he was being treated for cancer after a post-trade exam revealed a tumor in his kidney. The Harden-to-the-Nets trade has to go down as one of the best deals in history for that reason alone.) But the Cavs team took New York in the first round. They were eliminated from the play-offs by the York Knicks. “Even for me, the lights were brighter than expected,” Allen said.

Allen was criticized for this; A competitor has to be ready for anything. But he was being honest. The noise of Madison Square Garden in May has a different impact, especially for a young and inexperienced team. So is the physicality of Playoff basketball. The pressure, the increasing fatigue and the feeling that just dancing on the sidelines is no longer enough; the team wasn’t set up for that yet. Last season, the Cavs advanced one more round by beating the Orlando Magic and then bowed out to the eventual champion Boston Celtics. But it’s been a strange season. Garland broke his jaw in the middle of the season in December and performed very poorly thereafter. Mobley missed nearly half the season with leg injuries and was unable to shoot while on the floor. Mitchell was injured and Allen missed most of the playoffs due to a broken rib. When more players were injured, the team won more often, and when all the stars were on the field, they worked less well together. How can two big men, Allen and Mobley, figure out how to work together on offense? Were Mitchell and Garland uneasy? Even a late-season win against the Magic couldn’t silence the questions. Journalist Katie Hiendl said the Cavs appeared to be “waiting” all season long. wrote In the Basketball Emotions newsletter. “It was as if they were checking each other to see who would go first. Individually they knew what to do, but together they hesitated.” Trade rumors flew. Instead, the team fired coach JB Bickerstaff and brought in Atkinson. Core pieces remained.

The Cavs, who were among the slow teams in the league last season, are playing fast this season. They drive more. They move off the ball more decisively; especially Garland, who seems to have put her struggles behind her. (He said conditioning was his biggest focus in the offseason.) Mobley is blocking shots, leading fast breaks and showing more offensive versatility. Mitchell sometimes seems to score on his own volition, but not on his own. Allen is averaging a double-double and advanced metrics show he is impacting the game at an elite level. The team has a Top Ten ranking in both offense and defense. They got off to a 9-0 start, the best in franchise history, and then defeated the Warriors in Cleveland to improve to 10-0. Then they improved to 11-0 with a win over the Nets on Saturday night. They are the last undefeated team in the league.

There is a sense of direction at both ends of the floor. Nobody waits anymore. Perhaps it is natural that the team is more harmonious this season than last season. Players learn each other’s tendencies, uncover their strengths, and find where they align. A good kit can look like a mechanism of complex interlocking parts, and so far Atkinson seems to have good ideas about how to plan it and when to make it work. You can see the cascading effects of different improvements: how Mobley’s increased aggressiveness on offense makes on-field formations with him and Allen more effective; How Garland’s movement off the ball creates opportunities for Mitchell; The more dribbling drives open up more passing lanes. The team has already played more matches with one hundred and thirty points than in the entire season before.

Will it last? The Cavs have had an easy schedule so far. The increased intensity can be difficult to maintain throughout the entire season. There will be injuries. But the fun of watching this team right now lies in the sense of possibility they project, the sense that no player is a fixed entity, that what is broken can be re-imagined, that there is pleasure in building little machines.