Cavs All-Star Jarrett Allen resisted the iPhone for as long as he could. Allen still maintains his beloved Android, but FOMO prompted the 23-year-old to finally join his teammates in the 21st century. “I actually had to get an iPhone because they wouldn’t let me in the group text,” Allen told ESPN’s Brian Windhorst on Tuesday’s episode of the Hoop Collective Podcast. “Sometimes it would be like, ‘J, why weren’t you at the event last night?’ What event? I wasn’t in the group text!”
Phones know everything about us, flooding our social media feeds with targeted ads and shopping recommendations. Yet, in the year 2022, Apple still hasn’t figured out how to accommodate non-iPhone-users in group texts, hanging Allen and the rest of his Android brethren out to dry.
“I [held out] for about three and a half years,” said Allen, who, along with Darius Garland, was one of two Cavaliers represented in Sunday’s NBA All-Star Game. “Then I had to cave.”
It’s been a whirlwind past year for Allen, who has seen his life change immeasurably since arriving in a trade from Brooklyn last January. In a span of 13 months, the 6’10” center has gone from an anonymous role player with the Nets to an indispensable member of the Cavs, who trail Miami by just 2.5 games for the Eastern Conference’s top playoff seed. He’s also added a few zeros to his bank account, landing a five-year, $100-million extension last summer. But arguably the biggest change was being granted access to the Cavaliers’ group thread, no longer annoying his iPhone-toting teammates with Android’s signature green text bubble.
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