Kevin Love - Miami Ground Machine

[FrontPageNews]

What good would Whiteside do here? We would then be even worse offensively outside. Are we going to start giving Frye 25+ minutes a game to not clog the floor with our already atrocious outside shooting outside of Korver? Love is going nowhere unless we get a big back that can also stretch the floor.

Whiteside can actually provide defense and is a better rebounder. You play whiteside at the 5 and Lebron at the 4 with shooters around them. You don’t need every player to provide spacing but you do need the ones who don’t to make up for it in defense. A whiteside Lebron Pnr wound be deadlier than anything Lebron and love have ran.

 

[Sir'Dom Pointer]

Whiteside can actually provide defense and is a better rebounder. You play whiteside at the 5 and Lebron at the 4 with shooters around them. You don’t need every player to provide spacing but you do need the ones who don’t to make up for it in defense. A whiteside Lebron Pnr wound be deadlier than anything Lebron and love have ran.

It's a futile discussion regardless. Miami has Olynyk, James Johnson, Winslow, Adebayo, Okaro White and even scrub Jordan Mickey all logging time at the PF position. It would be beyond stupid for them to trade Whiteside for Love.. especially when they have Olynyk who can strecth the floor just as well.. They don't need Love' rebounding with Whiteside at C.

Love's value is aonly going to go down as more and more PF shoot 3's just aswell and more SF's transition to the 4 spot. If he can't dominate inside against the small 4's then his value is just not that of an all-star. It's a shame..

I also don't trust his body and longevity.

 

[The Human Q-Tip]

Guys portraying Love as some kind of stiff need to wake up.

Lue played him out of position as a center, and he's no longer getting touches at the elbow. He has been horribly misused here.

He needs IT running the point on this team, badly. Rose is too much of a score-first PG, and while LBJ is a great passer, his assists generally don't come from him running actual plays.

Love played next to legit centers in Minnesota, and excelled. It would be nice if we had one here.

 

[FrontPageNews]

Guys portraying Love as some kind of stiff need to wake up.

Lue played him out of position as a center, and he's no longer getting touches at the elbow. He has been horribly misused here.

He needs IT running the point on this team, badly. Rose is too much of a score-first PG, and while LBJ is a great passer, his assists generally don't come from him running actual plays.

Love played next to legit centers in Minnesota, and excelled. It would be nice if we had one here.

He played center for like 3 games. Have you tried to watch him guard a pnr? It’s an automatic layup. And pek was almost as bad defensively as Love in Minnesota. Minnesota Love was more effective because he wasn’t concerned about being a skinny model.

 

[BrutX15]

Whiteside can actually provide defense and is a better rebounder. You play whiteside at the 5 and Lebron at the 4 with shooters around them. You don’t need every player to provide spacing but you do need the ones who don’t to make up for it in defense. A whiteside Lebron Pnr wound be deadlier than anything Lebron and love have ran.

Or we can just get a much cheaper option while keeping Love, and inserting him into a role he is actually useful in, instead of Lue misusing him to the fullest. Tyson Chandler anyone?

 

[FrontPageNews]

Or we can just get a much cheaper option while keeping Love, and inserting him into a role he is actually useful in, instead of Lue misusing him to the fullest. Tyson Chandler anyone?

I’d love Tyson. But we’re not trading for his contract. I say try the Larry Sanders experiment again. Maybe with a full season we could get him into shape. Just make sure someone is there at his door to wake him up.

 

[Sir'Dom Pointer]

Guys portraying Love as some kind of stiff need to wake up.

Lue played him out of position as a center, and he's no longer getting touches at the elbow. He has been horribly misused here.

He needs IT running the point on this team, badly. Rose is too much of a score-first PG, and while LBJ is a great passer, his assists generally don't come from him running actual plays.

Love played next to legit centers in Minnesota, and excelled. It would be nice if we had one here.

Love never played alongside a Center that complemented his skillset other than Mozgov. Pekovic was not a good rim protector.. and he wasn't much of a defender either.

Love is just used as a role player here of the lowest degree. Why don't we see dribble hand-offs, big to big screening, etc? It's bullshit... but that's on our coach and even Lebron.

 

[BrutX15]

I’d love Tyson. But we’re not trading for his contract. I say try the Larry Sanders experiment again. Maybe with a full season we could get him into shape. Just make sure someone is there at his door to wake him up.

A straight Shumpert for Chandler trade works. So the contract really isn't an issue. Bad contract for bad contract, but get a position player we direly need. Give them Frye and/or a 2nd rounder also. I'm almost certain a deal such as that could be done if the Cavs actually had interest in moving anyone at the moment. Plus it would give Zizic the opportunity to play behind someone who has been there done that in a similar role he may be in.

 

[Jontibs]

Beyond all the coaching and team cohesion issues it has to be said that Love is not moving well. Stands out on D because last year he did improve markedly in that area, and was more than decent during the playoffs. Short pre-season might be a factor, but he seems to have ongoing issues with ankle and knee problems, 3/4 times this seasons he has been hobbling badly at points in a game.

Conditioning across the group is not where they need it to be.

 

[The Red Viper]

Guys portraying Love as some kind of stiff need to wake up.

Lue played him out of position as a center, and he's no longer getting touches at the elbow. He has been horribly misused here.

He needs IT running the point on this team, badly. Rose is too much of a score-first PG, and while LBJ is a great passer, his assists generally don't come from him running actual plays.

Love played next to legit centers in Minnesota, and excelled. It would be nice if we had one here.

True.

I am not overly worried about Love in regular season or playoffs for that matter.

We can get a good rim-protector and our defense will immediately improve. But what would happen when we face the Warriors? Because against them, that Center would hardly log any major mins.

 

[enthb]

True.

I am not overly worried about Love in regular season or playoffs for that matter.

We can get a good rim-protector and our defense will immediately improve. But what would happen when we face the Warriors? Because against them, that Center would hardly log any major mins.

Love won't log any meaningful minutes against the warriors either. He's an easy guard for their athletic wings and can't guard any of them. We aren't going to beat them playing small ball. They are built perfectly for it.

 

[SanduskyCav]

Guys portraying Love as some kind of stiff need to wake up.

Lue played him out of position as a center, and he's no longer getting touches at the elbow. He has been horribly misused here.

He needs IT running the point on this team, badly. Rose is too much of a score-first PG, and while LBJ is a great passer, his assists generally don't come from him running actual plays.

Love played next to legit centers in Minnesota, and excelled. It would be nice if we had one here.

Weren't many people saying that this was a GREAT move when it happened? Or am I crazy?

Now that it was a failure people act like it was a total dogshit play by Lue. I'm not a fan of Lue at all, but everyone seemed to think it was great when Love was moved to Center.

 

[The Human Q-Tip]

Weren't many people saying that this was a GREAT move when it happened? Or am I crazy?

Now that it was a failure people act like it was a total dogshit play by Lue. I'm not a fan of Lue at all, but everyone seemed to think it was great when Love was moved to Center.

I didn't. Didn't agree with the theory of out small-balling everyone else then, don't agree with it now.

 

[Gus Zing]

I didn't. Didn't agree with the theory of out small-balling everyone else then, don't agree with it now.

Well it wasn't a horrible idea because obviously they knew TT has become useless all of sudden. He needs to play less mins to be effective. They needed another wing defender on the floor so LeBron isn't defending the best players at soon to be 33.

It made sense. Problem is Love is hesitant to move his feet and take charges. As someone mentioned earlier the entire team isn't in great shape. Last year's Kevin Love would be great at center. I still say him and the team need time to get in shape.

The good thing is other teams playing style is forcing people to get in shape.

 

[ACisKING]

I see a lot of discussion about what position Love should play. The far bigger problem is that either at the four or the five Love's game is anachronistic. Even though he provides spacing, he can't punish switches in the post consistently enough which makes running picks with him useless since opposing teams just switch. And he's a disaster on defense. Last year at least he showed consistent effort. This year he is chasing rebounds and not even bothering to contest. He looks afraid to take a charge at times and barely ever bothers to even jump when defending layups. He might be the only big in the league that will literally just stand there and watch as a penetrating guard lays the ball up right in front of him. And his defensive deficiencies are exacerbated by the Cavs horrid perimeter defense.

To be honest, I can't even figure out a scheme that could keep the Cavs defense afloat with Love on the floor. He certainly isn't capable of switching consistently (that one famous sequence guarding Steph aside). The Cavs have traditionally trapped picks involving Love but that leads to all sort of other open shots which is a problem with the Cavs slow foot speed as a team and relatively poor defensive IQ - it's basically just begging for open threes. Then this season the Cavs are dropping Love (and the other bigs) back on pick and rolls. But Love and the other Cavs bigs just don't offer any rim protection to stop penetrating guards. And that sort of scheme results in all sorts of open pull up jumpers. It also leads to generally passive, lazy play which is one reason why many teams around the league have reverted to more aggressive trapping schemes despite the weakness they create (Lowe and Arnovitz had a great podcast about that recently). The Cavs just don't have the right personnel to be even an average defensive team, and part of that (though certainly not all of it) is due to Kevin Love's ineffectiveness on that end.