Cleveland Cavaliers: Kevin Love Unavailable for East Semi-Finals

Seven years into his NBA career, Kevin Love finally had a chance to taste playoff basketball. Four games worth of postseason experience were enough for us to see that he wouldn’t be rattled.

In the first three games vs. Boston, Love averaged 19.8 points per 36 minutes, to along with 9.7 rebounds. He did his best to put the “How will he respond to playoff pressure?”  question to rest. He fit into his role GM David Griffin envisioned before the season, taking over six 3-pointers per game in the first three wins. Making 47.4% of them, Love was a wrecking ball for Boston’s defense. LeBron’s ridiculous driving ability collapsed Boston’s perimeter defense, and Love took advantage from the corners and wings.

Game 4, however, was a different story.

Love only played seven minutes before the most unfortunate scenario struck the Cleveland Cavaliers. Battling for a loose ball rebound with Kelly Olynyk, Love suffered a painful shoulder injury that caused him to rush toward the locker room.

On Monday, the injury was confirmed to be an acute anterior inferior glenohumeral dislocation of the shoulder. Medical specialists clarified that it was indeed a serious injury, and nothing for the Cavaliers to mess around with. Therefore, the team announced that Love would be completely unavailable for the Eastern Conference semi-finals.

The turnaround time for Cleveland between the first and second rounds does allow for a lot of rest. But, Love’s status isn’t going to change with the week-long downtime. If Chicago closes out Milwaukee in five games, the second round will begin on Saturday. Since Cleveland owns homecourt advantage, they’ll have a very limited roster to give their home fans to open the series. J.R. Smith was suspended by the NBA for two games of the next series, after delivering a vicious blow to Boston’s Jae Crowder in Game 4.

While Cleveland’s championship hopes are obviously becoming the bigger picture, the most important sentiments should be how horrible this is for Love. As Rotowire injury analyst Jeff Stotts points out, the average shoulder dislocation setback is 27 games for an NBA athlete. There are hundreds of differences with each player’s situation and injury specifics, but it doesn’t look good for Love to return during this playoff run.

For perspective, it took Cleveland a full eight weeks to reach their first 27 games of this year’s regular season (Oct. 30 to Dec. 23). From the current date, there are only five weeks before the NBA Finals begin. Again, these are just estimations based on the general shoulder dislocation, and shouldn’t be held as gospel. Everybody heals differently, and certain injuries can react in different ways.

But, from the general point of view, Love looks to be having his first career playoff run end abruptly.

Cavaliers’ head coach, David Blatt, has to find a way to mitigate the severity of his losses. Love’s positive impact shows up to such a large degree, that it becomes hard to see how Cleveland can replace such a valuable floor-spacer, and offensive glue-guy that he embodies. Love has accounted for 23% of Cleveland’s total 3-point makes during the early playoffs. Without Love’s production, the Cavaliers have combined to shoot just 30-of-101 from the outside (29.7%), which would be 14th among the 16 playoff teams. With Love’s production included, their 3-point percentage ranking rises to 9th.

It’s been a struggle for Cleveland to get the proper looks from deep in the first four games, so just imagine how much pressure is on Blatt’s role players with Love out of the picture.

James Jones, Mike Miller, and Shawn Marion just became very crucial to Blatt’s rotation, especially in the first two games. Typically, it just takes a couple games for LeBron to figure out a defense. After he gets settled in and effectively reads what Chicago is going to give him, the need for a deep bench isn’t as tremendous as one may think. After all, this is a superstars’ league, and the defining moments of a playoff run happen with the starters on the floor. Surviving the first two games with a 1-1 split could open the door for Cleveland’s firepower to take over the series. That becomes a grueling task, though, with no J.R. Smith.

Marion and Miller combined for just one minute played in the first round vs. Boston, and no offensive contributions. Jones, on the other hand, got 46 total minutes. After Love’s injury and Smith’s ejection in Game 4, he was forced to play 23 minutes in the closeout game. Unfortunately for Cleveland hopefuls, Jones never gave them a spark from the outside. He’s just 2-of-11 from 3-point range in the playoffs, playing right into Cleveland’s atrocious shooting thus far.

While trying to nurse his shoulder and return as soon as possible, Love is going to have to hard time watching his team vs. Tom Thibodeau’s defense. His offensive impact goes well beyond just being a spot-up shooter.

During the minutes Love was on the court this season (2,531 total), Cleveland’s average assist percentage reached 60.4% — meaning 60.4% of their offensive possessions end in assists. With him off the court (1,425 total minutes), their assist percentage lowers to 55.7%. That’s a +4.7% difference, which doesn’t really seem too monumental at a first glance.

However, the difference LeBron’s on/off effect brings to the assist percentage is actually -1.4%, and Kyrie Irving‘s is -1.7%.  When Love is on the floor, everything is smoother, the defense isn’t able to get comfortable, and he causes constant defensive rotations or switches.

In terms of how Cleveland’s lineup will be affected in Games 1 and 2, it doesn’t look promising.

The Cavaliers’ most-used lineup this season (Irving, Smith, LeBron, Love, and Mozgov) played over 480 minutes together in the regular season. Per 100 possessions, that primary lineup was insane. They averaged 12.5 more 3-point attempts per game than their opposition, which resulted in a +20.7 point difference per 100 possessions.

Taking Love out of the equation, the next most experienced lineup played just 75 minutes together. That was the combination of Irving, Smith, LeBron, Mozgov, and Tristan Thompson. Cleveland had some issues managing this, as their difference in 3-point attempts per 100 possessions dropped from +12.5 to just +6.7. In addition, their net points per 100 dropped from +20.7 to an alarming -8.0 — almost a 29-point swing on average.

For those already speculating on Love’s future with Cleveland, it would be smart to just simmer down. He’s not concerned about what happens in two months, when he becomes a free agent. Coming to the Cavaliers via trade, the idea was to reach his first playoff appearance, and be the third powerful wheel towards a title.

In the first round, his goal was turning into a reality. He was nearly 20 percent of the way there, helping Cleveland to three of the 16 required wins to hoist a trophy. Ill-mannered decisions by a sore loser (Olynyk), and horrible injury luck has painted a different image for Love.

If LeBron’s run at five straight Finals ends on short note vs. Chicago, there is one thing Cleveland’s fan base can hold onto for the summer. Love could be fully convinced that this team could’ve — and should’ve — won a title if he didn’t get hurt on a dirty play.

For now, James and Irving have their backs against the wall, despite already being penciled in on the bracket. This team won’t be holding any MVP press conferences this year, but now they’ll need herculean, MVP efforts to send Tom Thibodeau home.

**All statistical support credited to Basketball-Reference**