Cleveland Cavaliers Can't Reach Ceiling Until Kevin Love Gets It Together
More than five months after trading for the three-time NBA All-Star, the Cleveland Cavaliers are still waiting for the real Kevin Love to show up.
That might seem like nitpicking with the Cavs riding a season-high 11-game winning streak, but this superpower wasn't assembled for regular-season success. Playoff triumphs are all that matter, and the only way to achieve them is by helping Love find his footing.
The 26-year-old has rarely seemed comfortable during his first go-round with Cleveland. It's been a year of peaks and valleys for a player formerly lauded for his consistency.
Diagnosing the Problem
Love's good times have been some of the NBA's best: 17 games with 20-plus points, 27 double-doubles (tied for sixth-most in the league). But the bad ones have been unlike any he previously encountered.
He played 77 games for the Minnesota Timberwolves last season and never finished with fewer than 10 points. Through his first 48 outings with the Cavaliers, he's already been held to single digits eight different times. He recorded multiple field goals in all but one of the games he played the past three seasons combined. He's already failed to hit that mark three times this year.
Compare Love's production this season with last, and it looks like it's coming from two different players.
Once Love moved from being Minnesota's main man to Cleveland's third wheel, he all but assured himself a quantitative loss in production. But with less of a burden on his shoulders and more help around him in All-Stars LeBron James and Kyrie Irving, Love figured to make up that ground and then some in the efficiency department.
That hasn't happened. He's suffered the same losses in quality categories as he has in the counting ones.
His 42.4 field-goal percentage tops only the 35.2 mark he posted during an injury-plagued 2012-13 season. His 17.2 rebounding percentage is on pace to be the worst of his career. Last season, he ranked 12th in ESPN.com's real plus-minus with a plus-5.06. This year, he's 98th with a plus-1.07.
During Monday's 97-84 win over the Philadelphia 76ers, Love scored a season-low five points. He misfired on six of his seven field-goal attempts, all of which came during the first quarter.
"That shouldn't happen," Cavs coach David Blatt said of Love's lack of involvement, per ESPN.com's Dave McMenamin. "It absolutely shouldn't happen."
But it did happen. To make matters worse, James said he felt that Love allowed it to happen, via McMenamin:
"I think Kev had some shots that he passed up on. Maybe he felt that he just wasn't in a good rhythm, but I know I hit him with a few [potential] shots after the first quarter where he had some good looks when he decided to swing-swing [with a pass], which is OK, it kept the ball moving. So, I think for Kev, I think his confidence maybe shooting the ball is a little down, but for me as a player, I get him good looks. I want him to shoot the ball and he needs to shoot it with confidence.
"
Love shot down James' suggestion, saying his stats have suffered "not for a lack of confidence," per Northeast Ohio Media Group's Chris Haynes.
"I'm just doing what's being asked of me right now and playing where I'm being asked to play," Love said. "We've won 11 games in a row, so I'm going to continue. That's just how it is right now."
To Love's credit, he is finding other ways to help. Over his last nine games, he's averaged 11.4 rebounds and 2.4 assists, both of which are improvements on his season-long per-game marks.
"The way he stretches the floor for us, his rebounding, his basketball IQ is really high, and it adds to our team," James said of Love, per Jon Krawczynski of The Associated Press. "It adds to our team as far as everything—knowing where guys are both offensively and defensively—and he's been great."
Still, there are so many potential avenues to production with Love that the Cavs aren't exploring.
Cleveland has yet to find the best use for the big man.
The Cavs have typically looked his way early, then given more touches to the ball-dominant pair of James and Irving over the rest of the game. Love has averaged 25.2 points per 36 minutes in the first quarter, then fewer than 15.5 in each of the other three. He's been a .498/.451/.901 shooter in the opening frame, per NBA.com's media stats, and only a .379/.265/.774 shooter the rest of the way.
His best rebounding and distributing quarter is also the first. When the Cavs keep him involved, he contributes across the board. But once his touches start to slip, so does everything else.
Credit Love for not taking his frustrations public, but his disappearing acts seem to be getting to him.
"I don't think anyone will argue the Cavs aren't maximizing Love's talent," Jason Lloyd of the Akron Beacon Journal wrote. "... It's evident Love is sacrificing more than most. ... It's clear Love wants more touches and wants to be more involved in the offense."
The Cavs are starting to resemble championship contenders—they're first in net efficiency since Jan. 15—but they could conceivably move to the head of that pack by getting Love back to his All-Star levels.
Getting Love Back on Track
Finding a solution requires work from both him and his team.
Frankly, a lot of this depends on Love simply playing better.
He doesn't seem to have the same energy, which is costing him potential scoring chances on the offensive glass. He's on pace to post personal worsts in both offensive rebounds per game (2.3) and offensive rebounding percentage (7.4). After finishing last season third with 4.4 second-chance points, Love is now tied for 24th at 2.7 a night.
As easy as this sounds, he needs to take better advantage of the open looks he's getting. On wide-open shots (no defender within six feet), he's shooting just 36.8 percent from the field and 34.0 percent from long range. Last season, those conversion rates were 47.8 and 43.6, respectively.
He's seen a similar dive in catch-and-shoot success. He went from finishing 41.3 percent of those shots to converting them at only a 36.7 percent clip now.
Those are a lot of points to leave out on the floor and presumably the signs of a player struggling to find his comfort zone. That's where the Cavs' work starts. They have to do a better job of putting him in positions where he's most efficient.
Love has never spent this much time behind the arc (37.0 percent of his field-goal attempts are threes) or this little of it near the basket (only 23.3 percent of his shots are coming within three feet). While he took multiple dribbles to set up only 12.3 percent of his looks last season, he's now getting 17.4 percent of his shots off that setup.
"I've seen Kevin fall down with the ball more times this season than the rest of his career combined, because he's always in positions where he's uncomfortable and he's forced into trying to make some sort of move to get a shot, and that has never been his game," a veteran coach told ESPN.com's Brian Windhorst.
The Cavs don't need to use Love more; they need to be smarter with how they deploy him. It makes no sense to keep the career 35.7 percent three-point shooter stuck behind the arc when so much of his best work originates inside of it.
Keep him near the basket, and he can be a force on the offensive boards. Stick him at the elbow, and he can pick apart a defense with passing. The Cavs are overlooking both of those gifts. He's averaging only 7.5 touches from close range and the elbow combined, after receiving 18.8 of them last season—when he had the league's third-highest player efficiency rating.
The Cavs don't need Love to be that player, but it's hard to imagine a championship scenario that involves this one. There would be too much pressure on James and Irving to perform. This supporting cast might be improved, but it still mainly features low-ceiling contributors and inconsistent scorers.
Love has the tools to be the perfect No. 3 option. He can complement the other stars or carry the torch in their absence, all the while elevating the guys around him. His long-range shooting plays into that, but so too does his long-distance outlet passing, interior offense, passing out of the post and work on the offensive glass.
But until the Cavs start taking full advantage of what Love brings, they will limit his impact and, by extension, their collective ceiling.
Unless otherwise noted, statistics used courtesy of Basketball-Reference.com and NBA.com.
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