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The Cavs apparently came very close to trading Kevin Love during his first season in Cleveland.
On his podcast, ex-Cavs executive Raja Bell (who now works for CBS Sports as an analyst) said the team had a “big deal” on the table for Love during the 2014-15 season:
LeBron went to L.A. had these conversations with Kevin Love, but it was so bad that first year that I was on a phone call with Dan Gilbert and our whole brass and we had a big deal on the table to move Kevin Love in the first year and I was like ‘Move him’ not because I didn’t think he was a good player. I just couldn’t see them figuring out how to work as people together.”
He also described Love as an “outcast” on that team:
When I was in Cleveland. Kevin Love was as much of an outcast as you can be on a team. It’s the dynamic of being in a locker room that’s just culturally a lot different than you. I say that and I think everybody understands black and white kind of deal. I was in a locker room with Matt Harpring in Philadelphia. Matt Harpring was miserable. He just was. Culturally this was when A.I. was rocking big gold chains and super baggy Reebok, sweatsuits, and everybody had due rag on and avirex jackets. We were a hip hop squad. And there sat Matt Harpring. And Matt was my guy and still is to this day and I would feel awful. I would look across the locker room and be like Jesus, he’s just so out of place. He can’t figure out, even if he wanted to be involved, which I’m sure he did, he couldn’t figure out culturally what they had in common. It just didn’t work.
It’s not new information that Love has been almost traded before — after all, he would be on a different team right now if the Cavs had the moves they wanted go through just this past summer — but it’s interesting to hear how close he came to be dealing dealt in the middle of his first season with the Cavs.