Cavs need more Kevin Love
Downsizing his game to fit with LBJ and Irving has limited Cleveland's offense
Originally Published: November 13, 2014
By
Bradford Doolittle | ESPN Insider
Heading into the 2014-15 NBA season, we forecast the
Cleveland Cavaliers to post a historic level of offensive efficiency. What else would a projection system say about a team that signed the league's best player in
LeBron James, traded for a top-10 player in
Kevin Love and teamed them with emerging star in
Kyrie Irving? Yet it's also an unfair forecast. There is nowhere to go but down from there.
Cleveland's ninth-ranked offense has been solid despite some well-publicized bumps, especially in the ball-movement category. Yet it's not nearly what we thought the Cavs' offense would be, and not nearly what it will likely become. The attack has been well-above league average when the "big three" have shared the floor, averaging nine points per 100 possessions better than the league average. If that sounds awesome, it's really not. According to NBA.com, among the 250 threesomes to play the most minutes so far this season, 57 have a better offensive efficiency than Irving, James and Love. Power trios like this are supposed to be the tide that lifts their teammates' proverbial boats, but the Cavs' three has just been treading water.
The early issues between Irving and James have gotten a lot of attention, but the player who has seen the biggest shift in his accustomed role has been Love. And if the Cleveland offensive rating is to soar to levels that can offset an iffy defense, the team must get more out of Love. How? The answers are simple, but the execution is complex. Love needs to be more assertive. At the same time, he needs to be put in better position to do more damage.
The evolution of Love
The move to Cleveland has amplified Love's unceasing drift out to the 3-point line and away from the offensive glass (see chart below). In every season of Love's career, the portion of his possessions used by 3-point shots has increased, and his offensive rebound rate has decreased. Love entered the league as a traditional power forward, with top comparables in SCHOENE like
Elton Brand and
Amar'e Stoudemire. Now, he's a prototype for a 21st-century big who does the dirty work on the defensive glass and fires away from the perimeter on the other end.
The Love movement
YEAR3PA%ORB%
3PA%: percentage of possessions used terminated in 3-point attempts
ORB%: percentage of teammates' misses retrieved
2008-092.815.1
2009-1016.414.5
2010-1120.613.7
2011-1226.611.6
2012-1330.911.5
2013-1435.58.5
2014-1536.84.6
Before this season, Love's top comparables in
SCHOENE were
Dirk Nowitzki and
Chris Bosh, the latter of whom has his own stories to tell about
adapting to the role of third option on a potential title contender. Now he's playing more like New Orleans'
Ryan Anderson. Last season for Minnesota, Love had a usage rate of 29 percent, a number down by nearly 8 percent with the Cavs. No matter how you slice it, Love has downsized his game to fit with James and Irving. And the adaptations can all be grouped under the same umbrella: sacrifice. It's not that he can't do the same things. He's just not being asked to.
The problems start with touches, and not quite in the way that you'd think. According to SportVu, James, with 5.6 minutes of possession and 75 frontcourt touches per game, and Irving, with 6.7 and 77.5, respectively, rank among the top 15 most ball-dominant players in the league. Yet Love's average time of possession of 2.4 minutes is the same as it was last season, and his average frontcourt touches have fallen by only slightly more than five, from 49.7 to 44.1. That difference adds up over a season, but it's still not the dramatic decrease you'd expect. More of an issue has been the quality of touches -- getting Love the ball where he can do the most damage. Last season, Love averaged 7.2 close touches per game (seventh in the league) and 11.6 elbow touches (second). This season, he's at 5.5 close touches and 4.8 elbow touches.
Another illustration of Love's glaring evolution is the play types on which he's utilized. According to Synergy Sports Technologies, Love is averaging 13 plays per game combined on post-ups, spot-ups and as the finisher on pick-and-rolls. That's actually up from 11.6 last season in Minnesota. The problem is that those are the only ways he's getting offense in Cleveland. He's averaging just five plays per game on things like offensive putbacks, cuts, transition shots, isolations, handoffs, and looks off screens. In Minnesota, he was getting 13.9 plays per game in those various facets of the offense. His role in Cleveland has been far more simplistic. You'd expect that to a certain extent, but not to this drastic degree.
The problem is more than one of usage rate. This role also underutilizes Love's considerable abilities as a passer. Last season, he averaged 4.4 assists on 8.4 assist opportunities per game, per SportVu. This season Love averages 1.8 assists on 3.5 assist opportunities. His assists per opportunity rate has remained about the same. Yet coach David Blatt's offense has limited both the quantity and the quality of Love's passing. Last season, Love created an assist opportunity for every 7.2 passes. This season, it has taken him 17.2 passes to create a scoring chance for a teammate. His turnovers are down, a natural byproduct of going from creator to finisher/spacer, but that still leaves a valuable untapped resource in the Cleveland toolkit.
Possible solutions
Love hasn't always been a particularly high-usage player. Most NBA stars build up to heavy workloads, and Love was no exception. In fact, his first elite-level season came before he turned into a high-usage offensive dominator. The first season in which Love finished in the top 10 in WARP was 2010-11, his third NBA campaign. His usage rate that year was 23, or 6 percent below last season. That's a doable figure in this Cleveland configuration, if only Blatt can better leverage Love's skill set.
The shift of
Dion Waiters to the second unit helps. The quartet of James, Irving, Love and
Anderson Varejao has an offensive rating 16.9 points better with
Shawn Marion than it did with Waiters in about the same number of minutes. However, while the Waiters move has allowed James and Irving to return to normal levels of usage, that has not been the case for Love, who can certainly be more assertive, particularly when it comes to finishing at the rim.
At the same time, Blatt can run more sets through Love in the low and high post. Blatt hasn't really been running the traditional Princeton attack in which the center emerges as a primary playmaker, à la
Vlade Divac and Brad Miller on the 2000's-era
Sacramento Kings. Nevertheless, finding lineups in which Love can operate in this fashion would enable Cleveland to reap the benefits of his passing ability, while also giving him the chance to diversify his scoring arsenal. Blatt can also do a better job of shifting more of Varejao's possessions to Love. While the big three have all sacrificed usage rate in the early going, Varejao's is actually up by 3 percent. This needs to change.
Finally, Blatt can better stagger his rotations to get Love on the floor more often as the top option. So far, James and Irving have played an unsustainable level of minutes, so there should be more chances for Love to shine. Love has played a total of just six minutes without either James or Irving on the court during Cleveland's first six games.
If the Cleveland offense were ripping off points at the prodigious clip we expected, Love's role would be irrelevant. When the unit shines, everybody shines. But the unit isn't as sparkling as you'd expect, and the underuse of Love is a key factor. Love can do more, but he's got to do it without detracting from James and Irving. Thus are the travails of learning how not to be a No. 1 option, a course that Bosh graduated from a few years ago.
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I agree completely about the need to stagger more minutes of our Big 3.
