Cleveland Cavaliers: It’s finally time to trade Kevin Love

After years and years of consideration, it is finally time for the Cleveland Cavaliers to trade Kevin Love.

From the moment he began his time with the Cleveland Cavaliers, Kevin Love has found himself in trade rumors. Constantly on the trading block, but never actually dealt away, Love has had a roller-coaster career with the Cavaliers.

The Cavaliers clearly had faith in Love’s talents, shipping two recent No. 1 overall draft picks in Andrew Wiggins and Anthony Bennett to acquire him. At the time, Love was a three-time All-Star and two-time All-NBA member, looking to join a championship-contending team.

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Now set to join Kyrie Irving and LeBron James as the final member of their big three, Love was ready to finally compete at a high level. Unfortunately, it became clear right away that Love would be the odd-man-out in this trio.

Often reserved to an off-ball role in the corner, Love would frequently be taken out of plays and forced to watch the duo of Irving/James run the show. As a result, Love’s numbers dropped significantly.

Kevin Love’s drop off:

• 2013-14 (Minnesota) – 26.1 points, 12.5 rebounds per game
• 2014-15 (Cleveland) – 16.4 points, 9.7 rebounds per game

Because of this, it’s no surprise that Kevin was thrown into multiple trade rumors throughout the course of his time in Cleveland. The urgency to win a championship was at an all-time high and Love’s inconsistency made him an easy scapegoat.

The Cavaliers struggled to decide whether or not they should trade him, ultimately choosing not to.

This worked out well for the Cavaliers, who went on to win the 2016 NBA Finals. While he doesn’t get much credit for his performance, Love did haul in a crucial 14 rebounds as well as an impressive defensive stop on Stephen Curry in Game 7 to help secure the win for Cleveland.

After the 2015-16 season, Love finally found comfort in his role. In the next two seasons, Love averaged 18.3 points and 10.2 rebounds a game as he was selected to two All-Star teams. K-Love was a premier talent on one of the best teams in the league.

Of course, everything changed once LeBron James announced his decision to join the Los Angeles Lakers.

Leaving Love alone to hold the torch in Cleveland, more trade rumors quickly emerged. However, the speculation was cut short when Love agreed to a multi-year extension with the team.

At the time, the Cavaliers made this decision with the hopes that Love could continue to lead the franchise in a positive direction while they work on bringing in more young talent.

The team had serious hopes of making the playoffs in the 2018-19 season and being competitive with Love leading the way.

Sadly, this optimism didn’t last long as Love made it through just four games before falling with an injury that would sideline him for nearly half the season. Without their best player, the Cavaliers finished the year with a 19-63 record, making them the second-worst team in the league.

It’s clear now that Love isn’t capable of leading a team to anything notable and the Cavaliers are better off going all-in on a rebuild. Because of this, the Cavaliers should be looking to trade Love as soon as possible to acquire young talent and future assets.

Luckily, this might be a great time for Love to hit the market. The NBA is currently more wide open than ever before with most elite teams having only two All-Star players. Because of this, it’s possible that one of these squads could choose to trade for a third star.

Furthermore, the teams with only one star might be looking to create a duo of their own.

Love isn’t going to be the best player on a championship team, but he is still talented enough to tip the scale in someone’s favor. Plenty of teams will be competing this year and at least one of them has to be willing to trade some future assets for Love.

This is the perfect time to finally part ways with K-Love.