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Kevin Love (Pt. 2): How Good Is He? Peer Comparisons Tell (Part of) the Story

When it became clear that Kevin Love was leaving the Minnesota Timberwolves last summer, I, like many non-Wolves fans, was excited to see how this would play out for a top-15 player. We've had quite a bit of player movement over the last few years, but it's still a treat to see how these guys fit on different teams.

I wasn't prepared for a bevy of talk from radio shows to TV sets to internet blogs proclaiming that Love was, in fact, NOT a top-15 player, or even top-20, top-25. Many of these sources complained (somewhat rightly) that Love's Minnesota teams had never been to the playoffs and had cracked 40 wins only once: last season in an overall losing effort.

This is a classic case of a guy who's statistics and (for me) in-person eye test tell a story that is very contradictory to his team's performance. I set out in mid-August (around the time it became apparent the Cavs were going to get him) to analyze Love's game for myself. The amount of information available quickly turned a 2-part post into four parts (so far!). Part 1 details why he left Minnesota. Here, I wanted to compare his stats to other preeminent power forwards. I wanted to see exactly how good Love's stats are: are they great for active players, strong for his generation, or historically significant?

The following is a condensed excerpt from the post on my blog. Click here for the full version.

The first comparison I ran pits Love against his contemporaries, namely power forwards who have made an All-NBA team in the recent past. I focused my analysis on those players whose natural position is power forward, eliminating guys like Pau Gasol and Tim Duncan who move naturally to center (I did include Bosh, even though he plays center for Miami - that was more a necessity to fit LeBron rather than a true fit to Bosh's skills). Given Basketball-Reference's lookup limitations, I had to leaveDavid Lee out, which I don't really have a problem with.

The list of peers I developed is: Dirk Nowitzki, Chris Bosh, LaMarcus Aldridge, Zach Randolph, and Blake Griffin. I broke the analysis down into 3 categories:

  1. Traditional "counting" stats (e.g. points, rebounds, assists), but using %s instead (i.e. Assist %, the % of teammate baskets assisted by the player)
  2. Shooting stats, including attempts from 3
  3. Synthesized efficiency ratings such as PER, win shares, etc.

Comparing young guys like Love and Griffin to older players isn't exactly fair, so I used numbers from each players first 6 years in the NBA (except Blake who has played only 4 seasons, which is immaterial to the analysis).

COUNTING STATS

Love has a reputation as an outstanding rebounder and above average passer. He's also known as a defensive sieve and I expect his block numbers to be low. What do the numbers say?

All numbers from Basketball-Reference's Player Comparison Finder. See the results for this table in downloadable format here

Monster rebounding numbers, as expected. The difference between Love at 29.8% of all defensive rebounds and 2nd place Griffin's 23.7% (6.1%) is almost as big as the difference between Griffin and last place LaMarcus Aldridge (6.9%). Even more astounding is the 12.3% offensive rebounding rate. The rebounding numbers are so astronomical that I ran another set of numbers comparing Love to contemporary centers (again from their first 6 years, so this is young Timmy and Dwight):

This data table can be found here

Holy cow. Love isn't just a fantastic rebounder for his position. He's a fantastic rebounder, period.

Back to the PF comparison. I expected Love to have a high assist rate within this group with his ability to facilitate from both the block and elbow, and he does (I was surprised he trails Griffin, and underrated passer). When you combine Love's rebounding AND assist numbers, it gets more interesting. I did a query of all starter seasons (bench players can have weird rate stats) with assist and rebound numbers that matched Love's from last season:


Data found here; query is for single season with total rebound % >= 18.6, assist % >= 21.3, games started >= 10

Minnesota had two of the best Kevin's to every play the game and traded both.

SHOOTING STATS

Dirk and Kevin are the shooters. Kevin is just behind Dirk in most categories, although he's one of the poorer finishers, evidenced by a low 2P %. However, he generates a ton of free throws and makes them at a fantastic rate. I know a lot of people (including myself) that associate free throws with athleticism (Derrick Rose, Russell Westbrook, LeBron James) or crafty ballhandling and shooting (Kevin Durant, James Harden, Stephen Curry) or post behemoths (Dwight Howard, Tim Duncan, Blake Griffin). Kevin Love doesn't fit any of these stereotypes. I don't have an obvious answer as to why a player like Love is able to generate almost 1 free throw for every 2 field goals.

EFFICIENCY STATS


Efficiency numbers all have to be taken with a grain of salt since our ability to measure offense trumps defensive analysis by a wide margin. Still, by most measures, Love grades as the second-most efficient among this group with a defensive rating at least in the ball park of the others. Bosh is probably the best defender of the 6, but doesn't get credit for it.

CONCLUSION

Using these rudimentary comparison methods, Kevin Love is clearly one of the best at his position. He's not an all-around player, but the things he does are extremely important in the modern NBA: rebound, pass, shoot, draw fouls, and avoid turnovers. You can argue which of the myriad counting and rate stats are the most important - in fact, the upcoming parts 3 and 4 will take a dive into this. And you can cherry pick individual season stats for almost every good NBA player. But I just wanted to leave you with one last nugget:

Data link here

Yeah, Kevin Love is pretty good. And the Cavs now have two of those guys on their roster.

See the full post here.

You make the calls #YMTC #YouMakeTheCalls

This is a Fan-Created Comment on FearTheSword.com. The opinion here is not necessarily shared by the editorial staff at FearTheSword

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