He’s back, ladies and gentlemen. No, not LeBron James, although he’s doing just fine too. And no, not Kyrie Irving either. He’ll be back in a month or two. No, I’m talking about the one and only Kevin Love, who even two seasons ago was considered by many to be the best power forward in the NBA.
Last season was a rough one for Love. His numbers were down across the board from his previous beast of a year in Minnesota, and for the first time since his rookie year he failed to average a double-double (though he was close with 9.7 rebounds).
The transitional year becoming a Cleveland Cavalier was wrought with challenges. No longer was he The Man on the team; no longer would he get as many shots; no longer would he take the final shot; no longer was the team built around him. Instead, he became one of the cogs, albeit a key one.
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It wasn’t until late last season that Love finally got it going as the Cavs went 32-9 in their final 41 games. Then the playoffs arrived and everyone in Cleveland now hates Canada because of Kelly Olynyk. But I digress.
This season, however, has been a return to form (for the most part) for Love. In the offseason there was much talk about how the Cavs were going to focus their offense through him, and LeBron has reiterated in a Mufasa-to-Simba-type-way that he wants Love to be the one taking over more on-court duties.
Everything the light touches, Kevin!
And it appears to be working. Love is looking much more comfortable this season and for those who have seen him play for years, his normal proclivities are returning.
For instance, he’s rebounding like he used to and has been doing a little less of the floating around he did last year when he basically looked like a tumbleweed with three-point range–bouncing across the court in near silence.
Through the first seven games, Love is posting 17.0 points, 12.6 rebounds, 2.7 assists and 0.9 blocks (a career-high) per game. Appropriately, his team is 6-1.
In fact, Love is one of just three players in the entire league who are averaging at least 15 points, 10 boards and two dimes. The other two are DeMarcus Cousins and Blake Griffin, who are also both big men.
While those two can be considered centerpieces of their teams, Love is not (or is at least still in the transitional phase to become one) and thus trails them in points and field goal attempts. Yet, he still manages to lead them both in rebounding.
“What about the defense?” you say. “Wasn’t Love the equivalent of sticking a smiling scarecrow under the rim that had a sign saying, ‘Score on me!’ around its neck?”
Not quite. While he wasn’t as bad as people made him out to be last season, he seems to be trying even harder this year. Cleveland is fifth in the league in defensive rating (97.6), and is still maintaining their dominance as a scoring powerhouse with the third-best offensive rating (107.4).
When Love is on the floor, the Cavs’ steal percentage is 6.8, and their block percentage is 7.0. When the mercurial big man takes a seat, those percentages drop to 4.6 and 4.9, respectively.
Opponent’s also have an offensive rating of 96.4 when Love is on the floor. When he’s not? It skyrockets to 103.2. And as for the Cavs themselves, their offensive rating is a blistering 113.5 with K-Love on the hardwood (slightly better than the Warriors’ offensive rating, which is a league-leading 113.4) and 96.7 without him.
So yes, Love is doing things for Cleveland. When he’s on the floor, the squad is much better than when he’s not. This is despite Love’s personal shooting percentages, which we’ll get to in a second. As a club though, the Cavs have an effective field goal percentage of 53.1 with Love on, and 47.1 with him sitting.
Now imagine that percentage when Love finally gets his shot right?
That’s the only real knock on what K-Love’s been doing this season: he still hasn’t managed to quite get his shot going. Or, more specifically, he hasn’t been able to get his three-point shot going.
He’s actually shooting 50 percent from two-point range, which is second-best for his career (in 2013-14 he shot 50.2 percent on twos). But he’s only making 29.8 (lower than the last two seasons by around seven percent) of his threes. That wouldn’t even be so bad if he wasn’t taking so many of them.
He’s jacking up 6.7 attempts per game from downtown, enough to make Kyle Korver blush.
Thus, his field goal percentage has taken a hit and stands at 41.1 percent. Hopefully one of two things will happen: a) Love stops taking so many threes and works it more inside, where he’s making a high percentage of his looks or b) he breaks out of his slump and starts draining treys like he’s Stephen Curry’s long lost brother.
The latter is preferable, of course, because with Love stretching the floor it opens up tons of opportunities for the rest of the team. But finding a balance would be nice, and since 6.7 threes a game is too much anyway, sticking him in the paint where he has a better chance to score would be beneficial to the club as a whole.
This would get him to the free throw line more often as well, where he’s taking a career-low 2.6 attempts from this season but shooting a career-high 94.4 percent. Free points! Free!!!
So there you have it. This could be called an overreaction since we’re only seven games into Cleveland’s season, but if you watch basketball long enough you start to be able to recognize what exactly is sustainable for an 82-game slog and what isn’t.
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Love is back to playing his game, and while he hasn’t worked out all of the kinks just yet, being himself is certainly sustainable.