Kevin Love - Miami Ground Machine

[godfather]

I will have a HUGE issue if Love looks disinterested in the playoffs, regardless of the touches he is getting. That will have to be addressed immediately if that comes to fruition.

If we can find a way to engage Love early, he tends to play hard the rest of the game. When his shot isn't falling, is body language becomes pretty bad on the court, which could lead to costly mistakes in the playoffs when each possession is huge.

This will be the main storyline to watch regarding our team moving forward in the playoffs. I am pretty happy with our current rotation. I think Blatt has a good grip on how to effectively use our bench guys, depending on the match-up. Every "role player" seems to know their role. The problem is Love is not a role player. I just hope to see total-team effort, on both ends of the floor, regardless of how well an individual may or may not be playing.

LBJ and Love's "come to jesus" moment may be on the horizon. The playoffs are a different monster. Let's hope Love is mentally tough enough to rise to the occasion. From what i've seen so far, i remain skeptical.

Maybe I'm blind, and sure he hasn't always played well, but I've yet to see him disinterested. How many times has he continued to play hard, fight for rebounds, even when his shot/offense/role isn't going so well?

I don't think Love's mental toughness should be questioned, with everything he's gone through this year, and how he's handled the entire situation as well as anyone could ask for.

Not really agreeing with people thinking he checks out mentally. I think there have been times where he's not been confident in his offensive game. That I agree with, but is that definitively been a mental thing? Maybe some, but it's probably been a physical problem as much as anything as well. I don't think Kevin Love suddenly forgot how to put the ball in the hoop.

You can say he's not played up to par this year, and he hasn't, anyone would be lying if they think he has.

Lack of effort, not being engaged? No, I've not really seen it. He plays hard out there, whether he's playing bad or good.

 

[Paul]

While I think we all should probably reserve judgment until the playoffs, it's a pattern at this point where if Love isn't involved in the offense early, he starts to drift and checks out mentally for the entire game.

It's not a surprise, most big guys who can score are like that. They want their touches if you are going to ask them to rebound, play D, etc. Not excusing his lax play in the last game, but that's just reality.

Why not just make an effort to throw the guy a bone in his sweet spots. I'm not even talking about FGA's, just give him some touches so he feels like a decision maker in the offense like Kyrie and LBJ are. Honestly Love is a great passer, arguably the best passing PF in the game, why not use that skill in our half-court offense regularly?

Lebron and Kyrie don't have to initiate every play off the dribble...

With Love's lack of energy and movement, he's less likely to get open, though. If you stand in one place or shuffle your feet a few paces to "spread the floor" youre not going to be hard to keep track of. Defenders aren't having to work hard to guard him, and he's not getting open too often unless they leave him to go guard LeBron or something.

If he would push himself and run the fast break more, he would get more layups and easy scores and easy assists that way. He does it maybe once every 2 or 3 games. Mozgov, a clumsy 7 foot 1 inch player runs the floor way more than K Love does.

I think there's multiple factors at work here. And it can be a sort of a chicken or the egg thing with some of it. Does Love disengage from games because he isn't being fed the ball, or is he not being fed the ball because he's disengaged?

And that is only one factor in this mess, and what's really going on is above our pay grade. My fear is that there's no one on the Cavs roster/coaching staff that can reach Kevin at this point. I think this experience has been very damaging for his ego. He has said for years that he wants to play for a winner, and now suddenly he is on a winner and now he seems to almost be saying "yeah, but I want to do it as a focal point, not as a third banana".

My hope is that he's just being really tentative and cautious due to the back situation, and that he will sack up and at least TRY and play basketball during the playoffs. Honestly he may even loaf in the first round, hoping that the Cavs can still win while he preserves himself.

Frustrating situation, to say the least. It's starting to feel like the team is just sort of using him as a decoy floor spacer while they feed his offensive load through Mozgov and JR. Maybe that's placing too much emphasis on one game but we're so close to the playoffs now and it would be nice to see some signs of improvement. He looked great against Memphis, but it's getting harder and harder to just hope that that Kevin Love shows up when we need him.

 

[Cayman13]

Frustrating situation, to say the least. It's starting to feel like the team is just sort of using him as a decoy floor spacer while they feed his offensive load through Mozgov and JR. Maybe that's placing too much emphasis on one game but we're so close to the playoffs now and it would be nice to see some signs of improvement. He looked great against Memphis, but it's getting harder and harder to just hope that that Kevin Love shows up when we need him.

There has got to be a reason for this. You cannot tell me that this coaching staff, entire front office and Lebron James himself are okay with using Love like this. If that's true, I would be shocked. I think something else is off.



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[Benedict_Boozer]

Umm what? Kevin's +/- has been consistently positive for the last few months with or without getting his touches. In fact, Kevin's highest +/- since the All-Star break was +33 and he only had seven shots that game. His second highest +/- since the All-Star break was +25 and he had only seven shots that game again.

He also has the second most double-doubles of any PF in the East. Second only to Pau Gasol.

I hear you. Good points, it could just be confirmation bias on my part because it seems on the eye test that when Love is not involved early it snowballs and affects his body language and energy level the rest of the game (more often than not).

I'm not trying to take shots at the guy, I guess it's just a matter of expectations.

I would feel better about it if we saw more games like the MEM or DAL games in terms of his usage and effort level.

 

[Paul]

I hear you. Good points, it could just be confirmation bias on my part because it seems on the eye test that when Love is not involved early it snowballs and affects his body language and energy level the rest of the game (more often than not).

I'm not trying to take shots at the guy, I guess it's just a matter of expectations.

I would feel better about it if we saw more games like the MEM or DAL games in terms of his usage and effort level.

He usually does get a lot of first quarter touches though. His fg attempts in the first quarter is probably higher than LeBrons. His fg % in first quarter is also good so he should be leading the team in first quarter points. He IS getting looks and taking shots in the first. Why he shoots so much less in quarter 2 3 and 4, I'm not sure if we really know if that his his choice based on his knowledge that he knows hes not really lighting it up after quarter 1, or because his back is sore/he's exhausted from playing defense for the first time in his life, or whether its a game plan or other players knowing he hits less shots in the later quarters and using him more as a decoy.

 

[Jon]

Raw plus minus is not a good stat to use for comparative purposes like this...

It can't prove that he doesn't "check out", but it does show that he's not dragging the team down - which is a pretty reasonable conclusion given his abilities to space the floor and rebound are valuable in and of themselves. Also that while he may seem to get frustrated on offense, he still seems to give effort on D. A front-court guy not playing D can drag down an entire unit, and if that was the case, it would show up in +/-.

 

[LeShaq]

Love's hurt, I don't think there's a real question about that. Windy said as much recently when he said on his radio show that he thinks the Cavs will come out after the season and say that Love's back was worse than they let on.

Still, he's performed at about the level of Year 1 Bosh in Miami (Y1M). Their advanced stats are very similar.

Bosh Y1M
Usage = 23.5%
PER = 19.4
WS48 = .177
OBPM = +0.1
DBPM = +0.3
BPM = +0.4
VORP = +1.7
RAPM = +3.5

Love 2014-15
Usage = 21.6%
PER = 18.8
WS48 = .163
OBPM = +1.9
DBPM = +0.0
BPM = +1.9
VORP = +2.5
RPM = +3.31

So, Bosh better on PER (with higher Usage Rate), WS48, DBPM and RAPM (although I'm not sure if RAPM and RPM are exactly the same). Love better on OBPM, BPM and VORP.

Overall, Love seems the more valuable in terms of BPM/VORP. He's top 10% in the league in RPM, and his RPM has positive (good) offensive and defensive components.

For a first year Cavs player who is a 3rd option with a bad back and a rookie head coach, things look pretty good. They need to get better, of course. But Bosh wasn't injured his first year in Miami, I don't think. And Spoelstra wasn't a rookie NBA coach.

Miami improved substantially after their first year together with LeBron, Wade and Bosh. I'm confident we'll do the same, although I think we are capable of at least making the Finals this year and possibly winning the title this year as well.

 

[Jon]

My biggest concern with Love is that we never saw him get hurt, so, we really don't know what's wrong. We can do little more than guess.

His back may improve with extended rest, maybe he'll eventually need surgery, or maybe it will bother him the rest of his career. We don't know - we just know something of the symptoms (crippling back spasms).

If his back issues are at all similar to Z's, than reducing his minutes, moving him more to the perimeter, and getting him rest in season may very well help him maintain his career - but the minutes would eventually catch up with Z and it hurt him the most when we needed him the most (in the playoffs).

 

[cavsfever]

Still, he's performed at about the level of Year 1 Bosh in Miami (Y1M). Their advanced stats are very similar.

Bosh Y1M
Usage = 23.5%
PER = 19.4
WS48 = .177
OBPM = +0.1
DBPM = +0.3
BPM = +0.4
VORP = +1.7
RAPM = +3.5

Love 2014-15
Usage = 21.6%
PER = 18.8
WS48 = .163
OBPM = +1.9
DBPM = +0.0
BPM = +1.9
VORP = +2.5
RPM = +3.31

So, Bosh better on PER (with higher Usage Rate), WS48, DBPM and RAPM (although I'm not sure if RAPM and RPM are exactly the same). Love better on OBPM, BPM and VORP.

Overall, Love seems the more valuable in terms of BPM/VORP. He's top 10% in the league in RPM, and his RPM has positive (good) offensive and defensive components.

For a first year Cavs player who is a 3rd option with a bad back and a rookie head coach, things look pretty good. They need to get better, of course. But Bosh wasn't injured his first year in Miami, I don't think. And Spoelstra wasn't a rookie NBA coach.

Miami improved substantially after their first year together with LeBron, Wade and Bosh. I'm confident we'll do the same, although I think we are capable of at least making the Finals this year and possibly winning the title this year as well.

This is less a demonstration that Love was as good as Bosh as that advanced statistics are very limited in what they can tell you. If you watched the games in both seasons, Bosh was a MUCH better defensive player than Love, in fact Bosh's defensive abilities were central to Miami's whole scheme and how they could be a good defensive team while lacking so much size. I don't think Love's rebounding makes up for that gap.

The advanced stats also give a lot of extra weight to good 3-point shooting; I guess in some sense that's statistically accurate but Love this year didn't have any shot that was as reliably deadly as Bosh's midrange jumper when left open. I think Bosh's reliability on that shot let Miami do some more things on offense. But as long as people cover Love from 3 that helps us too -- frankly I think that in the playoffs we may see teams experiment with leaving him more open, as he has not really been stellar on open 3-pointers.

We have seen some flashes this year of a Love who is at least as valuable if not more valuable than Bosh, he's had a couple of great games, but he just has not been consistent -- perhaps injury-related.

 

[Paul]

This is less a demonstration that Love was as good as Bosh as that advanced statistics are very limited in what they can tell you. If you watched the games in both seasons, Bosh was a MUCH better defensive player than Love, in fact Bosh's defensive abilities were central to Miami's whole scheme and how they could be a good defensive team while lacking so much size. I don't think Love's rebounding makes up for that gap.

The advanced stats also give a lot of extra weight to good 3-point shooting; I guess in some sense that's statistically accurate but Love this year didn't have any shot that was as reliably deadly as Bosh's midrange jumper when left open. I think Bosh's reliability on that shot let Miami do some more things on offense. But as long as people cover Love from 3 that helps us too -- frankly I think that in the playoffs we may see teams experiment with leaving him more open, as he has not really been stellar on open 3-pointers.

We have seen some flashes this year of a Love who is at least as valuable if not more valuable than Bosh, he's had a couple of great games, but he just has not been consistent -- perhaps injury-related.

If we play the Bulls second round, my strategy if I'm the Bulls is definitely going to be let Kevin Love beat us on offense if he can, and when he's on defense we hammer the crap out of him when he goes for rebounds. I'm just picturing Taj Gibson all over Love, making him his bitch.

I just don't really like the way K Love has handled all of this. If his back has really been bothering him the whole year, was he communicating this to the coaching staff? You'd think they would have tried at some point to shut him down for a month or so and see if it solved it.

 

[LeShaq]

This is less a demonstration that Love was as good as Bosh as that advanced statistics are very limited in what they can tell you.

No, I don't think so. I think your interpretation of the data is likely more a demonstration of your apparently limited ability to analyze what you're seeing rather than the supposed limitations on what the data is saying.

Advanced statistics exist to try to help eliminate the gap between reality and faulty eye tests. I think you may be a victim of the faulty eye test. And I think you are not alone in that matter, at least not on this board.

 

[Helium filament]

If we play the Bulls second round, my strategy if I'm the Bulls is definitely going to be let Kevin Love beat us on offense if he can, and when he's on defense we hammer the crap out of him when he goes for rebounds. I'm just picturing Taj Gibson all over Love, making him his bitch.

I am so tired of hearing about Love's "bad defense". Since we acquired a legitimate center and Kevin hasn't been undersized for his matchups, Kevin's defensive rating is remarkably close to Mozgov's and Shumpert's, the two best defensive players on the team. He has been very consistent with his defense, even when his shot isn't falling, game after game. If anyone, Kyrie and JR will be the ones that are exploited.

 

[LeShaq]

I just don't really like the way K Love has handled all of this.

This concerns me as well and I think it's why we heard LeBron saying stuff like "fit in, don't fit out" or whatever he said.

Love has had a tough year by his standards. But he needs to get fully on board now and let go of whatever may be in his head. Just sacrifice for the team and figure the rest out later, after we make our playoff run.

 

[Paul]

I am so tired of hearing about Love's "bad defense". Since we acquired a legitimate center and Kevin hasn't been undersized for his matchups, Kevin's defensive rating is remarkably close to Mozgov's and Shumpert's, the two best defensive players on the team. He has been very consistent with his defense, even when his shot isn't falling, game after game. If anyone, Kyrie and JR will be the ones that are exploited.

I'm not saying his defense is especially bad, I'm saying that when he's in the paint the teams will deliberately try and hurt him physically to flare up his back issues and hopefully knock him out of the game.

 

[CPK]

I'm not saying his defense is especially bad, I'm saying that when he's in the paint the teams will deliberately try and hurt him physically to flare up his back issues and hopefully knock him out of the game.

And that's when we unleash Perk on them.