Kevin Love - Miami Ground Machine

[MarkyCavs88]

 

[Ozcavs89]

Kevin love is great for the regular season and makes any team better, however unfortunately he is a borderline liabilty against this warriors teamn, cannot defend any one of curry,cupcake,thomson or green

 

[chuck0609]

Kevin love is great for the regular season and makes any team better, however unfortunately he is a borderline liabilty against this warriors teamn, cannot defend any one of curry,cupcake,thomson or green

What team can guard the warriors?

This version of the Cavs team is the deepest its ever been during the LBJ era. Once IT enters the lineup, there are two waves of players that can put pressure on GS for 48 minutes. there are players that can pester Durant and Green that aren't named LBJ.
The Cavs have never had that type of depth and talent to match against GS.
Is it enough? Who knows. But short changing the ever evolving K Love is bullshit. He's playing great ball right now on a completely different club that was in the finals last year.

 

[Cassity14]

I'm here to give credit where credit is due, and Love has played pretty damn well during the win streak. I think it has much to do with our renewed energy and effort on defense.

I've heard some discussion on here about Lue switching up the way we defend pick and rolls. Something about how we used to freeze them and now we're trapping everything. I could be completely off base, but if someone could enlighten me as to what the difference is now on defense in terms of strategy, I would appreciate it.

So the Cavs are switching every pick and roll that doesn't include the 5. On the surface, you would think this strategy doesn't impact Love whatsoever, but when the Cavs aren't employing a basic switch, they're requiring their weak side defenders to execute a series of rotations that has a lot of room for error, particularly if focus isn't extremely sharp. It also relies on lateral quickness, ability to recover, and having a rim protector to clean up for mistakes. The Cavs and Love don't offer a ton in those departments, so earlier in the season, they gave up a ton of wide open shots due to poor rotations and recovery. Going back to a basic swtich eliminates some of the more complicated results of such a scheme.

"Blitzing" in a pick/roll involving the center means the center runs out to cut off the ball handler and prevent a lot of dribbling, then has to immediately recover to his man to prevent the easy roll to the basket. This scheme usually relies on a wing defender to initially deny the easy pass to the pick setter until the big can recover.

Love has pretty good straight line quickness, especially for a center, so he's generally able to recover to his man in plenty of time, and thus prevent an easy layup.

 

[Barnzy]

Why does Lue only play Love 29 mins a game? Surely can push him up to 33-34. Even when his jumper is white hot he still gets benched.

His per 36 numbers are crazy.

20 points in 26 mins tonight.

Benched the whole 4th quarter when the team can't score at all..

Great work Lue!

 

[Jontibs]

Off shooting night though, only 6/16 and 6/10 from the line, not quite at his level from this run.

 

[czvo]

20 points in 26 mins tonight.

Benched the whole 4th quarter when the team can't score at all..

Great work Lue!

That's not what happened.

 

[Pjlea28]

No flow tonight at all on the offensive side - that along with poor shooting. They were getting goods looks ex. Korver - shots were just off.

 

[Barnzy]

That's not what happened.

Yes it is. Kevin checked in with 3.07 mins left in the 4th quarter, was immediately subbed back out at 2.38 left after assisting a smith three pointer and was checked back in with 1.30 to go when the game was pretty much over.

So he had 2mins TOTAL playing time in the 4th. So maybe I should've said nearly the whole 4th quarter...semantics. The other 10mins went to Jeff Green who is a solid role player but he's no Kevin Love and does not offer the 3pt shooting or rebounding. Very bad decision making by the coach.

 

[Joe Henderson]

Yes it is. Kevin checked in with 3.07 mins left in the 4th quarter, was immediately subbed back out at 2.38 left after assisting a smith three pointer and was checked back in with 1.30 to go when the game was pretty much over.

So he had 2mins TOTAL playing time in the 4th. So maybe I should've said nearly the whole 4th quarter...semantics. The other 10mins went to Jeff Green who is a solid role player but he's no Kevin Love and does not offer the 3pt shooting or rebounding. Very bad decision making by the coach.

He sat because Oladipo was torching him on PnR switches. Green came in and played solid D as he has all season

 

[Sir'Dom Pointer]

He sat because Oladipo was torching him on PnR switches. Green came in and played solid D as he has all season

We needed Love in the game.

The decision to switch was the issue... Cavs should have trapped Oladipo without thinking too much about it. Oladipo is the exactly the guy you want to trap since he struggles with passing out of double teams and is often to slow to react. You leave Young open from 3 and try your best to contest his shot.

The fact that we had to switch against Oladipo also shows you how weak defensively JR has been so far.

 

[buzzdog]

We needed Love in the game.

The decision to switch was the issue... Cavs should have trapped Oladipo without thinking too much about it. Oladipo is the exactly the guy you want to trap since he struggles with passing out of double teams and is often to slow to react. You leave Young open from 3 and try your best to contest his shot.

The fact that we had to switch against Oladipo also shows you how weak defensively JR has been so far.

JR failed miserably at staying in front of Oladipo, like he wasn't even trying although I think he was trying.

 

[Sir'Dom Pointer]

JR failed miserably at staying in front of Oladipo, like he wasn't even trying although I think he was trying.

Couldn't do a thing... blew right past him and he didn't even make a slight effort going over screens. Again, this is concerning. We are very very weak at the SG position... SG position is the least important position as far as impact go, but both Crowder and JR are currently sitting at less than 9 PER and that just can't happen on a contender if you have championship aspirations.

Now that IT is coming back, we are going to need strong perimeter defense, especially from the 2 guard position to cover for IT and players that he can't defend... We don't have a bradley here, but we are going to need a player that is going to cover his own position at the very least.

 

[Gus Zing]

Couldn't do a thing... blew right past him and he didn't even make a slight effort going over screens. Again, this is concerning. We are very very weak at the SG position... SG position is the least important position as far as impact go, but both Crowder and JR are currently sitting at less than 9 PER and that just can't happen on a contender if you have championship aspirations.

Now that IT is coming back, we are going to need strong perimeter defense, especially from the 2 guard position to cover for IT and players that he can't defend... We don't have a bradley here, but we are going to need a player that is going to cover his own position at the very least.

Just looking at the PER of the role playing starters.

Crowder 9
JR 8.1
Calderon 6.7

The Pacers, Celtics, Wizards, Raptors, and Sixers, don't have a player in their rotation with a PER under 10.

Pistons only have 1 and thats Stanley Johnson (bust)

 

[Jontibs]

Love had a great night scoring the ball, seems to have his 3 ball back in shape after an erratic start to the season, but I wonder if the hip is still bothering him. Poor night defensively, much less physical than he has been in some of these recent challenges against the big guys.