Kevin Love - Miami Ground Machine

[Jack Brickman]

Sir John, none of this is possible. If Kevin Love walks, we're so far over the cap, we would have absolutely no hope of replacing him by any stretch of the imagination.

We've blown our wad. We have relatively few assets left, and we absolutely must go all in at this point.

It's nice to think that we could just replace him, but, realistically, that's not possible.

I don't know why we'd even want to replace him. We're in year one of an entirely new team and just overhauled our roster again mid-season a few weeks ago. We're currently playing like one of the best teams in the NBA, and that's with all these guys figuring out how to play together under a rookie head coach and three new roster additions.

Given all that, I'd very much like to bring this same team back next season (I assume we'll make some minor additions as well) and see what they're capable of with half a season of playing together and meshing under their belts along with a full off-season.

 

[clevelandrox23]

Clevelandrox and the 3 cronies who keep liking his hilarious posts/"disagree" with everyone else:

That's racist

 

[Zen]

This whole thing is just silly to me. Love fills a huge gap for us and lets Lebron and Kyrie do their things by creating driving paths for us.

Hes averaging 17/10 as a THIRD option. Show me another third option in the league that is averaging 17/10. He's a positive locker-room guy and hes still young.

You plug any #1 into this team and ask them to be the third option and they are all going to take a statistical hit. We filled our major defensive gaps with trades. The team is on a 10 game winning streak after filling those gaps. This team has the potential to easily win 60 games next year as they continue to grow together and Blatt continues to expand his system.

 

[Jscc]

First of all, it's too early to say either way.

If we go by win shares, then we don't need Kyrie or LeBron, either.

Kevin has a win shares of 5.2, Kyrie has one of 6.0, and LeBron has one of..... 5.6.

 

[Benedict_Boozer]

I appreciated the board work from Love tonight - he brought the effort so I have no complaints.

Still don't love the spots he is getting the ball on offense - last night against the Kings where he got it on the elbows was MUCH more effective. Hopefully we get back to that more frequently rather than having him standing near the 3pt line or setting picks at half-court.

 

[bobcat22]

I appreciated the board work from Love tonight - he brought the effort so I have no complaints.

Still don't love the spots he is getting the ball on offense - last night against the Kings where he got it on the elbows was MUCH more effective. Hopefully we get back to that more frequently rather than having him standing near the 3pt line or setting picks at half-court.

Agreed. They did try that backdoor pass to LeBron again but it went off his hands.

Blatt is a very secretive guy who even hates revealing starting lineups. My guess is Blatt is saving his really good sets for the playoffs. He's trying not to show too much during the season so teams can't have a complete scouting report on how to beat Cleveland. I do think once the playoffs hit Love will be used MUCH better in his system. Remember, come playoff time comes much more practice time. Blatt keeps saying how he wishes he had more practice time to install his offense.

 

[Sir John]

You could trade Haywood for Favors in the offseason. Who knows that might be plausible if the Jazz wish to build around Kanter and Gobert.

It's a thought.

At the moment, Favors isn't better than Love, they're about equal, so that doesn't clearly improve the Cavs, though it might give them some additional financial flexibility (maybe, depending on the salary rules which someone else would have to chime in on).

And that's assuming Love never improves and stays at his same Cavs-era reduced level, never getting his shite together. (So far, Favors career-best play hasn't come close to Love's career-best play.)

And of course, Jazz have to want to trade Favors for essentially cap relief and nothing more.

Strikes me as a pretty giant if.



Hey, I'm open to it...but it can't just be theoretical, when someone can fill in actual names of authentically available players --not just "what ifs," at least give me a plausible rumor of availability -- and demonstrate that they fit under salary and trade rules, let me know.

I'll be happy to evaluate at that time.

Until then, I'm going to focus on -- and hope -- that Love can slowly work his way upward from "above average" to at least "very good" with the Cavs.

 

[Pioneer10]

Weren't we all?

The majority of this board expected a monster game from Love in his return to Minny. The 23-point game against the Kings last night had everyone hopes up he'd come out firing (considering he hadn't scored over 20 in almost three weeks before then), just take a look at all the predictions of a 40+ point game hours before tipoff.

14/17/3 isn't terrible... but I guess I was expecting Love to string together four great quarters of basketball. He's one of the best 1st quarter scorers in all of the NBA (7.2 points a game, just outside top-5 in the NBA) I just don't understand how that never seems to carry over into the other three quarters of the game.

This is the Lebron/Kyrie effect. 1st quarter team follows a strict gameplan but then as Bosh noted everything becomes Lebron centric. When you have such a good player who also creates for others it's hard to stick with even something that is effective.

I would take this as an encouraging sign: the team has had more serious holes to fix but now things are getting into order we can take more time to integrate Love more into the office. Once the team gets used to getting Love in his spots (he is really good at the high post/elbow spots) they'll feel more comfortable running those plays later in the game.

 

[PriceFan14]

This is just awesome to see

http://instagram.com/p/yj00PzizWE/

 

[chuck0609]

People forget Love is our THIRD scoring option. He's not going to score every night. It would just be nice to see him be a little more efficient because he has missed a lot of wide open opportunities. I would not be mad at him at all if he averaged somewhere in between 17/10 to 18/12 for the rest of the year and shot a higher percentage from the floor.

Last night was the back end of a back to back on the road and he put up nice stats. Didn't struggle horribly.

Thats a really good result.

And I agree with this post; Love is here to rebound, stretch the floor and give you 17-20 pts a night.

 

[cavsfever]

A lot of excuses being made in this thread. Being the third wheel doesn't make you shoot 33% from 3, 42% overall. If anything having such other good players on the floor should increase your efficiency. Kevin Love this season has not played at anything close to an all star level even given the changes in his role on the team. And some of his fundamental flaws (undersized, can't elevate) are being revealed.

We may be stuck with him now but this guy has got to get better.

 

[Mr. Orange]

A lot of excuses being made in this thread. Being the third wheel doesn't make you shoot 33% from 3, 42% overall. If anything having such other good players on the floor should increase your efficiency. Kevin Love this season has not played at anything close to an all star level even given the changes in his role on the team. And some of his fundamental flaws (undersized, can't elevate) are being revealed.

We may be stuck with him now but this guy has got to get better.

He's been in a shooting slump for about a month now. History suggests he will snap out of it. In the meantime he is doing good work on the glass and improving on D. Shooters have slumps, it happens. Also, it has been noted here several times that he is playing through nagging injuries. The 9 day ASG break should help that. Kudos to him for playing through. Let's let the guy play a full season.

10 game winning streak. Breathe. Enjoy.

 

[Lee]

37 points and 27 rebounds in this back to back.

Funny thing is, that is 18.5/13.5, not to far from his average. Yet when you look at it in context, on this team that is really good numbers.

But haters going to hate, no, with 2 20 point scorers on the team, he isn't averaging 26 anymore.

Love is having an off year as he and the teammates try and figure things out and he still almost made the all star game.

 

[Lee]

A lot of excuses being made in this thread. Being the third wheel doesn't make you shoot 33% from 3, 42% overall. If anything having such other good players on the floor should increase your efficiency. Kevin Love this season has not played at anything close to an all star level even given the changes in his role on the team. And some of his fundamental flaws (undersized, can't elevate) are being revealed.

We may be stuck with him now but this guy has got to get better.

You do realize he is shooting the most 3 pointers out of any pf and all star stretch 4's Dirk and Milsap are averaging only a bit better from 3 at 36% while taking far fewer three's.

No excuse needed for Love, he is having a good year, just not against the unrealistic expectations.

 

[Lee]

You do realize he is shooting the most 3 pointers out of any pf and all star stretch 4's Dirk and Milsap are averaging only a bit better from 3 at 36% while taking not nearly as many.

No excuse needed for Love, he is having a good year, just not against the unrealistic expectations.