Kevin Love - Miami Ground Machine

I'm not mad at all with Kevin Love tonight. Certainly not last night. Played so well he didn't even have to be in the 4th.

Jack Brickman said:

The Wolves are using this video to promote the Cavs/Wolves game this weekend:

View: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=8_XhQPasGqk&x-yt-ts=1422503916&x-yt-cl=85027636

Click to expand...

View: https://twitter.com/APkrawczynski/status/561716590165893120

Sir John said:

Love has been an above average NBA player this season.

Certainly better than many realize, not to mention the vocal minority who have embarrassed themselves by revealing zero basketball understanding.

Love has far outplayed Bosh this season. By a wide and non-debatable margin (LINK).

When you compare this season's Love versus last season's Bosh, they performed about the same (LINK).

Click to expand...

Very interesting that Love and Bosh have virtually the same number of steals and blocks. Granted, Love has played more minutes, and these two stats aren't necessarily that great of measures of defense, but they do mean something and belie Bosh's reputation as the better defender.

Really, what these numbers indicate is that Bosh is a soft player who takes the easy path when things get tough, as they have this year in Miami. It's worked for him. He's still an all star by firing up long range shots, which he admittedly does pretty well. He's generally thought of my pundits as one of the 12 best players in the East. But he is turning into Channing Frye, on a much worse contract.

I said in another thread that it was a shame Love has struggled with his shot in January or he would be the clear pick over Bosh for the all star game (not that it matters to me, and Love could use the rest anyway). I agree though that Love has had the better year regardless, but I'm not exactly prepared to defend him for the all star game since he has been just good, but not that great.

Marcus said:

37 points and 27 rebounds in this back to back.

Click to expand...

That's 18.5 and 13.5. He averages 17.2 and 10.3 on the year. Not much difference.

I guess I'll be that guy...

Happy we got the win, but why is everyone acting like Love played great tonight? 14 points on 14 shots isn't exactly awe-inspiring stuff, especially when his main counterpart Thad Young finished with 19 points on 13 shots. A lot of those buckets were well contested from Love, but regardless Young was the power forward making the tough shots tonight, not Kevin Love.

Apart from some good work on the offensive glass Love wasn't a major factor in this game- he wasn't even on the court when the Cavs made their comeback in the fourth quarter. LeBron's clutch perimeter shooting and Tristan's interior defense [] were the bigger reasons we pulled out the win.

Kevin Love wasn't terrible tonight (17 rebounds don't fall in your lap), but it was still disappointing to see him finish with a measly 14 points. Anyone that didn't expect at least 30 cold-blooded points out of him tonight is lying.

I don't understand why we should expect him to drop 30 specifically against Minny. A game is a game and you can go hot or cold whenever.
Love played a nice game, wasn't brilliant but wasn't horrible too. He was okay.

CosmoKramer said:

I guess I'll be that guy...

Happy we got the win, but why is everyone acting like Love played great tonight? 14 points on 14 shots isn't exactly awe-inspiring stuff, especially when his main counterpart Thad Young finished with 19 points on 13 shots. A lot of those buckets were well contested from Love, but regardless Young was the power forward making the tough shots tonight, not Kevin Love.

Apart from some good work on the offensive glass Love wasn't a major factor in this game- he wasn't even on the court when the Cavs made their comeback in the fourth quarter. LeBron's clutch perimeter shooting and Tristan's interior defense chuckle were the bigger reasons we pulled out the win.

Kevin Love wasn't terrible tonight (17 rebounds don't fall in your lap), but it was still disappointing to see him finish with a measly 14 points. Anyone that didn't expect at least 30 cold-blooded points out of him tonight is lying.

Click to expand...

I wasn't expecting him to have a great offensive night on the tail end of a back-to-back (4 in 5 nights) given his present back situation. Hoping he'd go off, but not expecting.

This team simply does not need Love. Hes not worth the max for this team, maybe on other team, but hes not needed on this team. I wouldnt mind keeping him, but not for max.

If he just made 2 more of his 3's per night, I'd be happy. That should put him around his career average, and that's what I expect in the 2nd half, after a good rest.

I'll throw this out there. I've been slightly cool on Love as many of you know. Now that I've thought about it a little, maybe we're all duped by Dion still. We defended Dion because he got mad all the time and would scream "and 1" and "AYEE" all the time. I think we tend to overrate grit and anger. Therefore we get overly irritated at Love's seeming passivity. Yes, he's a bit passive at times, but I think we (and I) overstate it. Love is just more of a soft-spoken kind of player it seems, maybe more than we all thought. It's not a bad thing necessarily.

King Stannis said:

I wasn't expecting him to have a great offensive night on the tail end of a back-to-back (4 in 5 nights) given his present back situation. Hoping he'd go off, but not expecting.

Click to expand...

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.

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.

6kiss said:

This team simply does not need Love. Hes not worth the max for this team, maybe on other team, but hes not needed on this team. I wouldnt mind keeping him, but not for max.

Click to expand...

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

It would be fair to say that it looks like he's the last major piece that needs to find his role and fall into place.

But we don't know that he won't. That's why I say (again with emphasis): let's see what his playoff contribution is like. That's where it matters. I'll give him till then.

That's the real fact and we should probably just drop the mic and let that sit there.

(But I won't.)

If Cavs don't re-sign him, who do they sign?

They would need a front court replacement that is not merely "above average" but very good or All-Star caliber.

Or maybe two front court players that combined add up to more than Love alone.

I'd also like a salary cap expert to chime in.

It may not be so easy to swap in a different front court player(s) who is not just equal but better.

Remember, that's the bar. Can't be equal to Love, but must be better.

And available by next season, either FA or trade.

Who is that?

Without that "little detail" it's nothing but idle speculation anyway.


The one thing I couldn't care less about is saving Little Danny Gilbert one dollar in salary.

So unless you got a way to spend to ensure a better result, count me out.

Sir John said:

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

It would be fair to say that it looks like he's the last major piece that needs to find his role and fall into place.

But we don't know that he won't. That's why I say (again with emphasis): let's see what his playoff contribution is like. That's where it matters. I'll give him till then.

That's the real fact and we should probably just drop the mic and let that sit there.

(But I won't.)

If Cavs don't re-sign him, who do they sign?

They would need a front court replacement that is not merely "above average" but very good or All-Star caliber.

Or maybe two front court players that combined add up to more than Love alone.

I'd also like a salary cap expert to chime in.

It may not be so easy to swap in a different front court player(s) who is not just equal but better.

Remember, that's the bar. Can't be equal to Love, but must be better.

And available by next season, either FA or trade.

Who is that?

Without that "little detail" it's nothing but idle speculation anyway.


The one thing I couldn't care less about is saving Little Danny Gilbert one dollar in salary.

So unless you got a way to spend to ensure a better result, count me out.

Click to expand...

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.

Sir John said:

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

It would be fair to say that it looks like he's the last major piece that needs to find his role and fall into place.

But we don't know that he won't. That's why I say (again with emphasis): let's see what his playoff contribution is like. That's where it matters. I'll give him till then.

That's the real fact and we should probably just drop the mic and let that sit there.

(But I won't.)

If Cavs don't re-sign him, who do they sign?

They would need a front court replacement that is not merely "above average" but very good or All-Star caliber.

Or maybe two front court players that combined add up to more than Love alone.

I'd also like a salary cap expert to chime in.

It may not be so easy to swap in a different front court player(s) who is not just equal but better.

Remember, that's the bar. Can't be equal to Love, but must be better.

And available by next season, either FA or trade.

Who is that?

Without that "little detail" it's nothing but idle speculation anyway.


The one thing I couldn't care less about is saving Little Danny Gilbert one dollar in salary.

So unless you got a way to spend to ensure a better result, count me out.

Click to expand...

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.