Kevin Love: Having A Solid Season

He’s the forgotten man on the team despite being part of the Cleveland Cavaliers’ new Big 3. He only ever seems to interest people when they can complain about him. He’s the latest punching bag in a long line of players whose seasons appear to regress from their previous ones.

In fact, if the Cavs weren’t such a big deal this season and one of the more interesting narratives at play, Lance Stephenson might have been taking the beating instead of Kevin Love. But when you’re on a team with LeBron James, you’re slightly more likely to be watched than the guy who shares hardwood with Michael Kidd-Gilchrist and his nausea-inducing jumper.

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People all around the world have booed, debated and simply scratched their heads at Love’s season. No one, and I mean no one, seems to think that he’s had a good year. There are fans of weak teams looking to reload this summer with a key free agent who are actually protesting against the notion of trying to grab Love.

It’s reached that point. Only this time last season we were marveling at Love’s stats and sighing that his talents were being wasted in Minnesota. We all hoped and prayed that somehow he’d end up somewhere where he could be more competitive.

And now that he has, all the noise has been about how far he’s fallen off.

Well, I’m sick of it. I’m here for you, Kevin.

Love’s 2014-15 season may not be as blatantly great as it was last year, but it’s still pretty damn good. Let’s dive right in.

First of all, everyone complains about how Love has suddenly become so much worse that it’s unexplainable. Baloney.

He went from a non-playoff team in the beastly Western Conference to a team with title hopes constructed overnight that features the best player on the planet. Obviously, there were going to be some necessary adjustments and anyone who watched a previously constructed Big 3 knew that Love’s numbers would take a hit.

Besides LeBron, who’s always going to get his, the other All-Star on the squad is a score-first point guard in Kyrie Irving. Not very often does the offense flow through Love. One of James or Irving is always on the floor and they are always leading the attack.

Love was so used to touching the ball in Minnesota that he had to shift his game significantly to deal with his two ball-dominant teammates. This has led to him floating around the perimeter a lot more, looking for open three-pointers, while still trying to be aggressive off-ball and shaking things up every once in a while by posting up.

It’s taken him the entire season to find a role in the offense of the Cavaliers, but he’s starting to get the hang of it and, more importantly, accept it. I won’t say that he’s completely comfortable yet (he sure doesn’t look it at times), nor is he perhaps being used to his full potential, but in the marginally diminished role he now inhabits, he’s done a swell job.

Another, potentially more salient factor of Love’s game this season is that he is almost always playing injured. He hasn’t looked 100 percent since the get-go and there were times during the early parts of the season where he would’ve liked to have taken a few days off, but couldn’t because his teammates were also injured (LeBron in particular).

Like many other players, Love doesn’t like to talk about injuries and seems to hold a sense of pride in that he tries to suit up even when he feels awful. He’s had numerous ticky-tack injuries this season that haven’t kept him down and out, but have disrupted his play, harmed his movement and hindered his overall ability.

Most recently he’s been dealing with back issues that creep up every now and again; and they seem to get progressively worse over the 48 minutes of a game. Yet he still does his best to play in an admirable effort of will.

So, knowing these things, and by the sound of the world collectively shaking its head at him, Love’s numbers should be much worse than last season, right?

2013-14: 26.1ppg, 12.5rpg, 4.4apg, 45.7 FG%, 37.6 3FG%, 82.1 FT%, 36.3 minutes
2014-15: 16.4ppg, 10.0rpg, 2.3apg, 43.2 FG%, 36.2 3FG%, 80.3 FT%, 34.1 minutes

Huh. There’s a relevant drop in his points and assists per game, but we already established why that might be. Everything else appears pretty close to last season. What do you know about that.

Love’s still a pretty-darn-OK NBA player.

Last season he was putting up 18.5 shots a game, while this season he’s only shooting 12.7 attempts. In fact, all of his shot attempts have gone down, so that his shooting percentages are still as close as they are to last season’s is pretty impressive.

And if that’s not enough for you, how about the fact that out of the entire league there are only four other players besides Love who average at least 15 points, 10 rebounds, 35 percent shooting from deep and 30 minutes a game: Pau Gasol, Dwight Howard, Zach Randolph and Nikola Vucevic.

Out of those four, none of them actually take enough threes to be considered as a true part of this list. They all shoot less than one attempt a game, despite their percentages being 35 percent or above. That means they could’ve just gotten lucky a couple nights and hit one or two.

Kevin is the exception. He takes 5.2 shots from downtown a night. You see where I’m going with this, right?

Love is the only player in the entire league who averages these numbers. The only player. He’s still the ultimate stretch 4, and no one else even comes close. This is in part why the Cavaliers are so good offensively; opposing teams have to be wary of LeBron, Kyrie and Love all at the same time. With Love out there, he stretches defenses so far that they look like Mr. Fantastic in yoga class.

So even though he’s not necessarily taking a ton of shots, by just stepping foot onto the court Love is making an extreme impact.

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Of players that shoot at least five three-pointers a game while draining at least 35 percent of them and playing 30 minutes per game, Love is 14th in the NBA. All of the players above him are guards or small forwards. He’s among the likes of Chandler Parsons, James Harden and teammate J.R. Smith.

Not bad, considering those guys are traditionally thought of as dudes that get buckets and have big effects on the offensive end. Especially Harden, who is a beyond the arc extraordinaire and makes stats-focused guys go bonkers with joy.

Still think the Cavs would be just as well off without Love?

He’s accumulated a total of 8.4 win shares this season for his club. That’s more than Al Horford (8.2), Draymond Green (8.1), Kawhi Leonard (8.1), Klay Thompson (8.1) and John Wall (8.0).

It’s also just slightly less than LaMarcus Aldridge (8.5) and Blake Griffin (8.7).

This season, Kevin Love has been the punching bag. He’s taken verbal shot after verbal shot and said nothing, while quietly putting up very, very good numbers night in and night out. He’s played through injuries, joined a new team with two other All-Stars and has had to form new relationships with new people, perhaps most notably his coach.

So I’ll say it again: you got lucky, Lance Stephenson, and you should thank Kevin Love. Because just as he’s done for everyone else this season, he’s taken the fall for you too.

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