Kevin Love - Miami Ground Machine

[fan0283]

He looks so awful around the rim and his post ups are garbage. He just has the half hook over his left shoulder which he usually needs to commit an offensive foul to get off. There is no face up game to speak of or any kind of counter move if the hook shot is defensed. It seems like he loses the majority of the offensive boards he snags because he is so soft with the ball and too stubborn to kick it back out and reset. I can probably count on one hand the number of times where he has established good post position in this series rather than setting up shop so far from the hoop that it is pointless to even feed him.

It's embarrassing that he's not the unquestioned second most valuable player on this roster.

Yeah I never got why he doesn't kick out his offensive rebounds more. TT learnt this was better than going up and getting stuffed or missing a rushed shot

 

[Jscc]

Why do they make him hedge so much on high pick and rolls? He doesn't have the athleticism or foot speed to be effective at it.

 

[The Red Viper]

Why do they make him hedge so much on high pick and rolls? He doesn't have the athleticism or foot speed to be effective at it.

'Coz Mike Longabardi probably gets confused thinking its Kevin Garnett. As both played for Minny and look similar.

 

[fan0283]

Why do they make him hedge so much on high pick and rolls? He doesn't have the athleticism or foot speed to be effective at it.

Thought something similar. It's obviously to avoid him getting switched on a guard but it's not worth the ensuing scramble it constantly leads to. We can't keep playing every guard like they're Curry

 

[ACisKING]

Why do they make him hedge so much on high pick and rolls? He doesn't have the athleticism or foot speed to be effective at it.

Because Love is one of the worst players in the NBA at guarding isolations (bottom 7 percent in the regular season). So switching definitely won’t work. And honestly no big has any chance switching onto a guard like Oladipo. Plus since Oladipo can either pull up or blow by a retreating Love, dropping Love on those pick and rolls doesn’t work either. Therefore the coaching staff protects Love by employing a hard show or even an all out trap and then having another Cav pre-rotate to the roll man. Of course that leads to some four on three situations that the Pacers have taken advantage of to get good looks. But on the other hand, it takes the ball out of Oladipo’s hands and forces someone else to beat the Cavs. And honestly, through the first four games I feel like that strategy has been fairly effective in limiting the Pacers’ offense.

 

[fan0283]

Because Love is one of the worst players in the NBA at guarding isolations (bottom 7 percent in the regular season). So switching definitely won’t work. And honestly no big has any chance switching onto a guard like Oladipo. Plus since Oladipo can either pull up or blow by a retreating Love, dropping Love on those pick and rolls doesn’t work either. Therefore the coaching staff protects Love by employing a hard show or even an all out trap and then having another Cav pre-rotate to the roll man. Of course that leads to some four on three situations that the Pacers have taken advantage of to get good looks. But on the other hand, it takes the ball out of Oladipo’s hands and forces someone else to beat the Cavs. And honestly, through the first four games I feel like that strategy has been fairly effective in limiting the Pacers’ offense.

The reason I hate it is those 4v3 scrambles it creates. Pacers lack the offensive coordination to exploit it. Amazingly they keep turning in it over when they're in that situation. But the worry is we hedge against everyone and it already killed us in last year's finals. If we even get that far we're going to use the same defensive scheme that destroyed us last year. The postseason is an awful time to be a bad defensive big

 

[FrontPageNews]

 

[Jontibs]

Sad. To be fair in the last 3 months he has broken his left hand and then had his thumb ligaments damaged. Can not be helping with his grip, very turnover prone this series, and the Pacers clearly see his post ups as a chance to strip him.

Not sure what the worst part there is, the lack of a pump fake to get Young to commit, the rip, or turning around crying to the ref and not getting back. All of it is a bad look.

 

[tocov]

It also doesn't help that Love has been played out of position the entire season, and is still being used wrong by our coaching team, even though we now do other centers.

 

[Daniel89]

Anybody watch Kevin's postgame interview? He was acting like kind of a prick, gave generic answers, and was literally eating while people were asking him questions. I've never seen that kind of unprofessionalism out of Love before.

http://nba.cdn.turner.com/nba/big/t...3540-180422-KLove-PostGM-2062284_1280x720.mp4

He looks angry at himself and mentally drained to me. I sure would be after such a game, in which he played terrible and cost the Cavs their momentum multiple times.

Gotta admit that it's a weird interview from him though.

 

[Kiddo]

Love would be an excellent complement to Anthony Davis.

Moreso than Cousins. Too much duplication of skills.

Mirotic is the perfect player beside AD. I'd trade Love for him in a heartbeat but the pelicans would say no.

 

[Green Lantern]

Anybody watch Kevin's postgame interview? He was acting like kind of a prick, gave generic answers, and was literally eating while people were asking him questions. I've never seen that kind of unprofessionalism out of Love before.

http://nba.cdn.turner.com/nba/big/t...3540-180422-KLove-PostGM-2062284_1280x720.mp4

I saw that..even though he may have been hungry , I have seen him interviewed many times and he's never acted like that.
Perhaps he was disgusted with his performance but just say that and leave it be.

 

[KB]

Mirotic is the perfect player beside AD. I'd trade Love for him in a heartbeat but the pelicans would say no.

I like Mirotic but you're crazy. Mirotic is pretty streaky and has gotten hot at the right time, look at his games from 3/7 through 4/1 ( in 13 games he scored 10 or more only 5 times and had terrible fg%'s as he had 10 game stretch where he over 35% twice at 37% and 44% ). He also let Aminu go for 17ppg in the Portland series iirc which is double Aminu's season average.

It helped Mirotic's offense that Portland doesn't really have any bigs and spent all their money on wings like Evan Turner and that he's playing next to AD when AD is going nuts

 

[Kiddo]

I like Mirotic but you're crazy. Mirotic is pretty streaky and has gotten hot at the right time, look at his games from 3/7 through 4/1 ( in 13 games he scored 10 or more only 5 times and had terrible fg%'s as he had 10 game stretch where he over 35% twice at 37% and 44% ). He also let Aminu go for 17ppg in the Portland series iirc which is double Aminu's season average.

It helped Mirotic's offense that Portland doesn't really have any bigs and spent all their money on wings like Evan Turner and that he's playing next to AD when AD is going nuts

Okay that might be a stretch but you act like Love isn't streaky. He's averaging 12 pts on 36% shooting in the playoffs with piss poor def. That is so ridiculous for an all star. Mirotich is at least showing up in these games. 18 pts 10 rebs on 57% shooting and 46% from 3. If Love had those numbers we'd be coming home up 3-1 about to close out the series on Wednesday eve. Love is nothing more than a stretch 4 at this point although our pathetic excuse of a coach thinks he's a 5.

 

[Sir'Dom Pointer]

What the Cavs should have done is traded Love when he had the highest value and use their draft pick+another asset perhaps to trade for Mirotic to take his place.

Game has evolved...Love is no longer this unique offensive unicorn that he was back in 2013-2014/2014-2015. Almost every PF can shoot threes now, and because we mostly use him as a Spot-Up shooter, we don't even maximize him as a shooter and therefore his value for this team is way lower than it would be on any other team.(Off-Screens(Big to Big screens/guard to Big screens)/Hand-Offs)

You couple that with his defense and he is just not worth it for this team. I hope he has enough value after the playoffs, because he has to go...we are probably a year or two too late.

Even so, I'm not even that mad at him compared to how mad I am at Lue. I'm just being a realist as far as Love, but what Lue did last night is absolutely criminal...far worse than what Kevin did.I'll leave my comments for Lue in his own thread.