Eye-popping stat for Kevin Love, Cavs

The Cleveland Cavaliers are almost unbeatable when Kevin Love is playing lights out.

Here’s a number that will get your attention: the Cleveland Cavaliers are 11-2 this season when center Kevin Love scores 24 or more points.

These numbers are courtesy of Bleacher Report’s Greg Swartz, who tweeted out the stat during the Cleveland Cavaliers game against the New York Knicks on Monday:

With the Cavs defeating the Knicks 123-109 and Love scoring a game-high 28 points, a win was tacked on to an already eye-popping stat.

Love has been an excellent second option all season, averaging 17.6 points per game while shooting 45.8  percent from the field, 41.5 percent shooting from three-point range and 88.0 percent from the charity stripe.

He’s scored 20 or more points in 26 games this season and 30 or more points in 3 games.

Curiously, he’s averaging fewer points per game than last season (19.0). However, with the numbers that Swartz dug up, it would seem that Love needs to be more involved in the offense.

To see how Love could get to 24 points consistently, I’ll conduct an exercise similar to the one in this piece.

First and foremost, boosting Love’s scoring requires increasing his three-point attempts per game.

Love is currently taking 5.6 three-point attempts per game but some of the best three-point shooters, like Stephen Curry (9.8) and Klay Thompson (7.1), are taking between 7-10 three-point attempts per game.

Give Love 10 three-point attempts per game and he’s already halfway to 24 points, on an average day. Especially with him working on his three-point shot with Kyle Korver and making his release both higher and quicker.

The results are easy to see and Love hits even the deepest shots effortlessly.

Playing center and shooting like that creates a mismatch no team wants to deal with when there are two or three other players who can run the pick-and-roll and Love on the court.

Moving on, while Love is good for the occasional straight-line drive, the team’s ball-handlers have to make a concerted effort to get the ball inside to Love rather than solely focusing on finding outside.

Love manages to draw a foul on 36.7 percent of his shot attempts, the second-best rate on the team. He’s even ahead of LeBron James (33.3 percent).

Foul shots attribute another four points per game to his scoring averages and he takes 6.8 field goal attempts inside per game, with 18.7 percent coming from the midrange. Love is converting 49.7 percent of his two-point attempts but that number is so high due to Love’s shooting percentage 0-3 feet away from the rim (65.5 percent).

That said, while there are going to be times where the midrange shot is what the defense has left for Love to take, this is a season in which it’s been much more important to get all the way inside.

This is where James’ court vision and passing ability will shine and, combined with a concerted team effort, there will be plenty of opportunity for Love inside. 8 or 9 two-point attempts per game are the final recipe for Love scoring at least 24 points per game.

One way for them to do this would by using Korver’s gravity to set up Love inside, using pindowns to free the big man up for clean looks around the rim.

Upping Love’s field goal attempts might mean less for any player on any given night but that’s clearly not a bad thing.

When Love is that hot, usually the team is off to a good start on the scoreboard. As a result of his sharpshooting, opposing team’s are forced to put a more lithe (and likely smaller) player on Love to guard him out on the perimeter or else their traditional bigs are too far away to contest, instinctually guarding the paint instead of the perimeter.

Should that ‘lithe’ player be on Love, it opens up opportunities for Love to post said player up.

Consistently able to create separation for a hook shot or turnaround jumper from the post, Love is scoring 1.01 points per possession on post-ups this season on 49.1 percent shooting (84th percentile).

With just one game remaining in the regular season, the playoffs are right around the corner. Love, one of the great NBA big men, has a chance to make a bigger impact than ever.

Quite frankly, and perhaps obviously, the Cavs need him now more than ever too.

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*All stats gathered from www.basketball-reference.com