Kevin Love - Miami Ground Machine

Czvosec said:

I have no doubt TT will play his ass off. That will never be a problem with him. The problem is, and you can throw Shump in there too, that he will now be put in a position where he's asked to do things he's simply not capable of. I'm not just talking about shooting either. One of the underrated things about Love that doesn't get noticed is he hardly ever makes a bad play on offense. He almost never takes a dumb shot, and always plays within himself. He will sometimes take chances with those outlet passes, but those are few and far between. Tristan is just not on the same level as a decision maker, and THAT is the biggest issue.

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I don't disagree with any of this, but for the time being at least, the Cavs as a team can absorb Love's production and TT can add a few things Love doesn't necessarily provide consistently.

It's certainly a huge blow, but you can do a helluva worse than Tristan Thompson as replacement.

King Stannis said:

"I defeated, single-handedly the Pistons team that ended the Kobe/Shaq dynasty. I took a team with the likes of Donyell Marshall, Ira Newble and Eric Snow's corpse to the NBA Finals and I took the heart out of the Oklahoma City Thunder forever with only a modest effort. I smashed Tim Duncan, though he had the much, much better team. I destroyed the Pacers without Chris Bosh and I dragged a broken, demoralized Heat team to the Finals last year. Tell me, Windhorst, what battles has the Bastard of Chicago, Rose ever won that I should fear him?"

-LeBron James, the One True King.

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But Stannis - it is not only the Natural Son of Chicago that I fear. A king with a silver crown still sits upon the Iron Throne. An upstart in gold and blue masses its armies in the west. The southrons, in red and gold, march upon King's Landing. We may have a rightful claim to the throne, but many battles lay ahead. Lord Drew is a valuable ally, with his ability to strike both from short and long range. Prince Iman is a stout defender and skilled archer. Maesters Tristan and Timofey are cunning and resourceful. But beyond that? Even with Tormund Marion and the rest of the Free Folk, our reinforcements are too old, too young, or too disorganized to be of much help. As your humble servant and Hand, I feel obligated to advise you.

Lord Davos

One thing about this -- I never thought Love was going to leave, ever, but he definitely isn't leaving now. He has unfinished business in Cleveland.

IF it's true that Love can't make the injury worse, then I think there is a real chance he will play in these playoffs.

I had a very similar injury to this. Dislocation, torn ligaments, labrum tear. The difference is that my labrum tear was of a different variety than the one Love has.

I had the injury for years and didn't even know that I had it. I knew something was wrong with my arm but didn't know what it was and doctors couldn't figure it out. I got a surgeon to do an arthroscopic procedure on me and found out later what the damage was.

I played basketball for years with the shoulder like that. My shot wasn't great, because the stability of the joint was off. But I could play, I could rebound, I could do whatever I wanted for the most part.

The key here is "can't make the injury worse." If that is the case, then there's no reason for Love not to play. Or, I don't see why he would not play. Pain is pain, but if you can't injure yourself further than my guess is he will play.

Recovery time is 6 months after surgery. That is how long it takes the ligaments to heal. That sucks because Love won't be able to work out this summer and we'll lose time with him in training camp to improve the offense.

If Love plays, my main concern is whether or not he will be able to shoot 3-pointers with any accuracy. Also, he is likely to experience a good amount of pain if he wants to keep arm-fighting for rebounds as he usually does.

I'm skeptical of the "can't make the arm worse" claim. But if it is true, then my guess is that we will see Love in the playoffs provided we make it past the Bulls.

AZCavs said:

I don't disagree with any of this, but for the time being at least, the Cavs as a team can absorb Love's production and TT can add a few things Love doesn't necessarily provide consistently.

It's certainly a huge blow, but you can do a helluva worse than Tristan Thompson as replacement.

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What does TT give that Kevin didn't consistently? Kevin rebounded more, played more defense, was much more of a scoring threat, etc. The main reason TT was getting offensive rebounds when he was in was because Kevin was used to space the floor at that point and wasn't able to get ideal positioning. I hope TT steps up, but he really isn't an ideal replacement. We will need to use a combination of players to get what Kevin gave us.

i dont believe it cant get worse. sounds ridiculous. the entire arm has to settle back onto his goddamn body.

this is not taking into account the bulls will be trying to rip it back off and the refs will allow it, and love will not be able to rebound like he did before.

Hes not going out there in a sling.

Im hungry for crow

If Love does end up playing, my guess is he'd wear one of those "stretch" type shirts that Dwight Howard wore when he was playing with a torn labrum.


EDIT: The Dwight Howard shirt is known as a "posture shirt:"

Picture - http://www.sporttechie.com/wp-content/uploads/2014/11/dwight-howard-posture-shirt.jpg

Info - http://www.sporttechie.com/2014/11/...helps-every-type-of-athlete-stay-in-the-game/

Helium filament said:

What does TT give that Kevin didn't consistently? Kevin rebounded more, played more defense, was much more of a scoring threat, etc. The main reason TT was getting offensive rebounds when he was in was because Kevin was used to space the floor at that point and wasn't able to get ideal positioning. I hope TT steps up, but he really isn't an ideal replacement. We will need to use a combination of players to get what Kevin gave us.

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I'm sure this has been covered earlier in this thread, but I don't see TT being the one to replace Love at PF. That's going to be LeBron. I don't really see a ton changing in the way that Blatt uses Mozgov/TT.

The biggest question I have is who will be the one to step up at the 3 with LeBron moving down to the 4? Especially with JR out for the first two games, one (or preferably a combination) of Jones, Marion and/or Miller will be key to our ability to maintain the kind of spacing that Love gave us. No, it isn't ideal to have LBJ defending against Noah or Gasol for long stretches, but Blatt can coach around that... especially since Chicago is not a good jumpshooting team, making a straight zone or matchup zone less of a risk. It also helps that Noah is a shell of his former self right now.

The really great thing about Chicago losing tonight isn't so much the additional rest that we'll be getting... it's the additional practice time. Now, we'll have sufficient preparation for Blatt to adjust the roster/rotations with the injury/suspension complications he now faces. I'm still pretty confident that we're going to have too much offensive firepower for the Bulls to keep up with for a series. For a Top 4 seed, their offense is incredibly inconsistent.

KilgoreTrout said:

But Stannis - it is not only the Natural Son of Chicago that I fear. A king with a silver crown still sits upon the Iron Throne. An upstart in gold and blue masses its armies in the west. The southrons, in red and gold, march upon King's Landing. We may have a rightful claim to the throne, but many battles lay ahead. Lord Drew is a valuable ally, with his ability to strike both from short and long range. Prince Iman is a stout defender and skilled archer. Maesters Tristan and Timofey and cunning and resourceful. But beyond that? Even with Tormund Giantsbane and the rest of the Free Folk, our reinforcements are too old, too young, or too disorganized to be of much help. As your humble servant and Hand, I feel obligated to advise you.

Lord Davos

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We will march, and we will get to the Finals …or die in the attempt.

ThirdWorld said:

Dubs are winning without David Lee

I somehow see the same person in Love, dunno maybe it's just me cause their both white.

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Da' White Howard isn't even the best big on that team, it's Draymond Green.

RedBlackAttack said:

I'm sure this has been covered earlier in this thread, but I don't see TT being the one to replace Love at PF. That's going to be LeBron. I don't really see a ton changing in the way that Blatt uses Mozgov/TT.

The biggest question I have is who will be the one to step up at the 3 with LeBron moving down to the 4? Especially with JR out for the first two games, one (or preferably a combination) of Jones, Marion and/or Miller will be key to our ability to maintain the kind of spacing that Love gave us. No, it isn't ideal to have LBJ defending against Noah or Gasol for long stretches, but Blatt can coach around that... especially since Chicago is not a good jumpshooting team, making a straight zone or matchup zone less of a risk. It also helps that Noah is a shell of his former self right now.

The really great thing about Chicago losing tonight isn't so much the additional rest that we'll be getting... it's the additional practice time. Now, we'll have sufficient preparation for Blatt to adjust the roster/rotations with the injury/suspension complications he now faces. I'm still pretty confident that we're going to have too much offensive firepower for the Bulls to keep up with for a series. For a Top 4 seed, their offense is incredibly inconsistent.

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Completely agree w/ this. We're going to see LeBron at the post this series, no doubt in my mind. The guy that's going to have to turn back the clock is The Matrix, and if we can get 30 solid minutes between JJ and Miller it would be immense.

Worried less about losing his floor spacing and more about losing the 10 boards...

Out rebounding Chicago's frontline will be huge

PIP said:

Worried less about losing his floor spacing and more about losing the 10 boards...

Out rebounding Chicago's frontline will be huge

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Or Milwaukee's...

PIP said:

Worried less about losing his floor spacing and more about losing the 10 boards...

Out rebounding Chicago's frontline will be huge

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This. We can create space if other guys are hitting their shoots and rotations but man T.T, Gov, and Perkins now I guess have to make up an extra ten rebounds a game. Why is it always the fucking Celtics good or bad teams that fuck over our runs at titles. Oh and the shady NBA refs and front office that seems to always be anti Cleveland and let teams get away with this BS. I blame as much of this fault on the NBA and the refs as I do on the Celtics. My favorite sport is becoming unwatchable because of these crooked fools.

PIP said:

Worried less about losing his floor spacing and more about losing the 10 boards...

Out rebounding Chicago's frontline will be huge

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I'm worried about both to be honest.

Since the All-Star break, this team is averaging 13 for 31 from three point range per game making it the most lethal three point attack in NBA history. Love and JR take 12 of those threes. Knowing that, I see the offense changing as I'm not sure if the team feels others are capable of taking all those threes as the finishing points of possessions. After the All-Star break, this team was actively looking for threes to end possessions and that's what made our offense so lethal. What I'm most afraid of is that we'll wind up with endless Kyrie and LBJ isos without all those threes.

In these playoffs, with Love on court, our ORating is 122.3. For comparison, the Spurs' ORating against the Heat in last year's playoffs was 120.8. With him off court, our ORating is 97.6. We've struggled offensively with him off the court to get the type of good shots that lead to an efficient offense.

TT hasn't been good defensively so far in the playoffs and is giving up way too many ORebs which we cannot afford against the Bulls. TT needs to continue to get ORebs, but also has to grab DRebs to end possessions, something he did not do in that last game against Boston. To be fair, KLove missed out on some box outs as well and gave up ORebs in the Boston series. Mozgov has really been our only big making a defensive impact and will have to up his minutes.