Cleveland Cavaliers: 3 players who could benefit from Love time out

The Cleveland Cavaliers are going to be without Kevin Love for a while, but that could be a positive for other pieces.

You’ve probably noticed that the Cleveland Cavaliers haven’t started well, and that’s definitely the case to this point. They are 1-6, and have a less than stellar plus-minus of minus-7.9. The team fired head coach Tyronn Lue on Sunday (per The Athletic’s Joe Vardon and Shams Charania) and it’s been reported that Kevin Love could miss a month-plus with a toe injury, per ESPN’s Brian Windhorst and Adrian Wojnarowski.

That’s probably a significant reason why interim head coach Larry Drew hadn’t simply stepped into head coaching duties yet, considering he still wants an agreement beyond the 2018-19 season from the Cavaliers, per Wojnarowski. It’s relatively unclear whether or not Cleveland will play their veterans significantly such as Tristan Thompson, J.R. Smith, Kyle Korver, George Hill and others for a while with Love’s absence lessening their already slim chances of winning games.

The team should be playing Thompson, Hill and Korver some, yes, but focusing on developing the younger pieces such as Collin Sexton, Larry Nance Jr., Ante Zizic and Cedi Osman is more important this year with the circumstances Cleveland is facing.

I was one of the delusional people thinking that the Cavs would probably hit the over in their Westgate Las Vegas SuperBook over-under of 30.5 wins, and it’s a near certainty that won’t happen now. The bright side is the Cavaliers could go younger at this point, try to trade their key veteran role players in the next few months to clear cap space and embrace the necessary developmental stage for the next few years.

Let’s take a look at the first player who could benefit from Love’s absence.