Kevin Love's Kryptonite: How to Beat the Minnesota Timberwolves' Star Player

Kevin Love is playing incredible this season, there's no question. From dropping 50 points to grabbing 20 rebounds, he has pretty much done it all this year. 

The Timberwolves will miss the playoffs again this season, but the future looks bright for the first time in years. The barrage of injuries this team has endured almost makes playoff contention an impossibility, but Love will do everything he can to help.

If Minnesota had ten more wins, Love would be the MVP race. With that said, he is still not getting a lot of national attention. That is par for the course as far as NBA coverage goes. You need to have some real success before you get any real attention.

Even the star-studded Clippers are only getting love when they play at home because there are only so many teams that matter even a little bit playing on the West coast on any given evening.

Something I have noticed this month is other power forwards around the league are making it a point to stop Love from going off. They see the big box scores he puts up, and when the Wolves roll into town, they say not this time, not to me. 

You see this happen in sports. When a guy from a smaller market team starts putting up crazy stats, people tend to brush it off because they aren't on a playoff team.

The old adage is that those huge box scores would come right back down to earth if the player was on a legit playoff team. I don't completely buy into that thinking, but I see the point.

Individual players are beginning to take some notice of Love's game, and are making a concerted effort when they play him to shut him down. No one wants to end up on SportsCenter with Love draining threes in your grill.

We saw this a few times this season, usually with teams that have comparable players to Love.

Portland's LaMarcus Aldridge always seems to want to get Love off his game. Then the Celtics' Kevin Garnett went into last Friday's game in Minnesota dead-set on making Love uncomfortable.

When guys like these play Love most of the game, the box scores do come down a bit. Love will still get his points and rebounds, but not necessarily 40 points or 20 rebounds. KG was wearing Love as a cape, and it worked.

Something KG taught the rest of the league Friday night was to get Love off his game, play him physical. Love is a great player, and a pretty good athlete, but he does not seem to like being bumped.

KG was all over him when they played last week. Love was limited to 22 points and 11 rebounds. KG had 24 points and 10 rebounds, so he basically cancelled Love out of the game.

To beat K-Love, you need to hit him in the mouth. Push him, grab him, bump him, anything you can do to get under his skin.

This is the only formula that has been able to contain love this season. With the amount of film teams and coaches watch these days, you can bet more and more teams will exploit this weak link in Love's game next season.

Not allowing Love to move freely around the court makes him uncomfortable. He needs to be allowed to roam and move offensively. He needs to be allowed to set high picks. The formula for limiting Love's effectiveness is out, now it will be up to Love to improve his toughness this offseason. 

As for the rest of this season, look for more teams to try to knock Love around. Coaches will be throwing bench players at Love more and more to use up some fouls and beat up on him a bit more. 

If we've learned anything about Kevin Love, it's that he is a crazy-hard worker and I would expect him to address this weak point over the summer.