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Why the Cavs should trade Kevin Love

The Cleveland Cavaliers might trade Kev Love. (EDrost88 / Flickr)
Expert
14th February, 2016
6

The starting power forwards on the NBA’s three best teams all have the same dynamic versatility to their game. They can shoot up a position and they can defend down a position.

Draymond Green, LaMarcus Aldridge and Serge Ibaka can all stretch the floor with their shooting but they’re also able to play centre and protect the rim in a pinch. That flexibility is the key to unlocking small ball, the name of the NBA’s revolution du jour.

For most teams small ball is offence at the expense of defence. Not for the Warriors, Spurs and Thunder. The defensive ability of Green, Aldridge and Ibaka allows Harrison Barnes, Kawhi Leonard and Kevin Durant play the four and devastate teams offensively while their team’s defence maintains its core integrity.

Two years ago Kevin Love was the quintessential modern NBA player – the big man who can shoot threes. Today he’s a dinosaur. Modernity is fickle.

In 2014 Kevin Love received third place MVP votes. Joakim Noah and Al Jefferson both placed in the top ten that year in voting, another sign of how swift and cruel the future can be. He was a franchise player, a transformative centrepiece on offence who could post-up and shoot from anywhere. He was a preternatural passer with the best outlet passes in the game. He was the best rebounder in the game for his position, a geometry professor on the glass, a genius of timing and angles.

His defence was a glaring hole in his game, but you forgive that when he’s putting up a 26-13 on 46-38-82 shooting splits with 4.4 assists per game as a power forward.

Love’s skills didn’t disappear with the move east from Minnesota to Ohio. He’s still a floor spacer, shooting threes at an above average clip. His rebounds are still in double digits and while his assist numbers have dipped, his passing remains elite. But while 18 months ago Love was almost unquestionably one of the NBA’s ten best players, it’s unclear what role he would fill on a championship contender in 2016.

The big man who can’t protect the rim is the NBA’s most awkward proposition nowadays. Just ask the Clippers. When the Warriors, Spurs and Thunder go small, where does Kevin Love fit in? He can’t play centre because Cleveland’s defence becomes a layup line.

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If you play him at the four he struggles to stay with Harrison Barnes, and he has no hope against Leonard or Durant. The West’s big three teams are so good and deep now that there are few hiding spots for a big man defender on the perimeter. The Cavs learned that the hard way in the Finals, trying to hide Timofey Mozgov on Andre Igoudala, who promptly torched them on the way to a Finals MVP.

The fundamental problem with Cleveland is that in a league that prizes big men who can both shoot and defend they’re paying four big guys who don’t have that skillset. Tristan Thompson is a nice piece, an energiser bunny athletic beast who eats the glass and provides solid defence. But he’s an offensive zero if he’s not dunking or rebounding. Anderson Varejao is an afterthought at this stage, and Mozgov’s season looks like it is never going to get over its injury plagued beginning.

David Blatt was fired for so many reasons but the fundamental basketball reason is that he could never figure out Cleveland’s big man situation. That’s not an indictment on him – this doesn’t seem like something that can be figured out. Not in Draymond Green’s league.

Love still has value around the league. It’s hard to forget a 26-13-4 season just two years ago. He’s locked up for the next four seasons and he’s only 27 and should age well considering he’s not dependent on his athleticism at all.

Who says no to Derrick Favors for Kevin Love? The Cavs get their two-way big man who can play centre, protect the rim, wreak havoc on offence and grow old with Kyrie Irving as the foundation of the team once LeBron James starts to fade. The Jazz get the offensive centrepiece that Gordon Hayward admirably tries to be but isn’t quite, and they have Rudy Gobert to cover up for Love’s defensive weaknesses.

What about the package that came up on Nate Duncan’s podcast centred around Danilo Gallinari and Will Barton for Love? The recent Carmelo Anthony for Love rumours are less enticing given Melo’s knees, but you’d have to think about it. Options abound.

The numbers don’t back up the eye test with Love’s struggles. In almost 300 minutes together, the Cavs are monstering the league with their line-up of Irving, J.R. Smith, LeBron, Love and Thompson to the tune of a net rating of +15.7, a mark that would eclipse the Warriors and Spurs. When Love is on the court the Cavs are a huge 9 points better per 100 possessions, and they’re actually slightly better on defence with him on the court too. And yet, something seems amiss.

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Love and James clearly don’t get on, having waged a weird passive-aggressive war through the media over the past 18 months, ranging from LeBron’s not-so-cryptic tweets last season about Love, to Love strangely saying that LeBron needed to ‘look in the mirror’ after Golden State trounced them in Cleveland last month. A trade seems like it would be as beneficial to the team structurally as it would be to Love emotionally.

There’s also the matter of Love in big games. Small sample size is the narrow argument’s best friend but it’s hard to ignore that in his last five games against the Spurs and Warriors Love has averaged 10.4 points per game on 37 per cent shooting.

The Cavs need a shake-up and Tyron Lue is not it. The Cavs are one of the league’s four real contenders but looking at the numbers and just going off the eye test, it’s Golden State and San Antonio, then it’s Oklahoma City, and then it’s Cleveland. The Cavs’ net rating is virtually half of the Warriors and Spurs.

It’s odd to call a team that is still a virtual lock for the Finals (although the Raptors are shaping up as a legitimate threat in the East) in need of a foundational change, but in a league with teams as dominant as the three in the West, Cleveland might need one. With LeBron having slipped from ‘top one’ player in the league to ‘top five’, the Cavs won’t be able paper over their cracks in June. They need a change, and Love is the wisest thing to throw in the air.

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