FanPost

Kevin Love's Struggles as a Cavalier

Hey everybody, I haven't posted here much since last season, so I've decided to gather some of my thoughts on our recent struggles in a fanpost, particularly in terms of Kevin Love's performance through the first third of his first season in Cleveland. It's early, and the trade still can't be analyzed until much more time has passed. These are simply my observations on his performance to date.

In the days leading up to the Kevin Love trade, his abilities as a player were analyzed very extensively by various FTSers and Minnesota fans. Many of us came away with the understanding that offensively, Love was a great three point shooter, decent post up player, and a lethal pick and roll or pick and pop weapon. Defensively, his ground-bound nature made him an unappealing rim protector and a step slow on pick and rolls, but his strength and smarts made him seem like a decent individual post defender, which I believe was backed up by various advanced statistics. In addition, his defensive rebounding prowess was argued to be a defensive plus for a team because lowering the opposition's number of offensive opportunities was in theory supposed to make a defense stronger.

In terms of what we've seen out of Love offensively this year, his three point shot has been a disappointment. He's had many open shots that simply are not falling. However, he's shown himself to be a very good shooter in the past few years so hopefully he gets out of his slump soon. When it comes to pick and roll/pop opportunities, I've been puzzled by how neglected they are. One issue might be how the rest of the team fits around a LeBron-to-Love pick and roll/pop, but in general this has also been a disappointment.

Defensively, Love has struggled. I have not watched him closely enough to see how consistent he is in terms of individual post defense, but he's seemed to play poorly in every phase as a Cavalier. He could probably be hidden if we had a dominant rim protector cleaning up behind him, but this team doesn't have anyone with the ability to do that. Tristan Thompson is a good defender, but not good enough to make up for having multiple minus defenders surrounding him.

Finally, while Love has been a good rebounder, he doesn't seem quite as dominant as he has been the past couple years. His drop in offensive rebound % is understandable, as his increasingly perimeter oriented game has led to less offensive rebounding opportunities for him. However, his defensive rebounding has also slipped a bit. Time will tell if this was affected by Anderson Varejao stealing boards from Love, as Andy is also a good rebounder.

Although Love has struggled at times this year, he's proven himself over his career to be an elite NBA player and I would not be surprised in the slightest to see him turn around his play and get back to his All-NBA ability soon.

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