Cavs: Koby Altman’s right in reiterating how Kevin Love is long-term piece

The Cleveland Cavaliers seem to fully believe that Kevin Love is still a long-term piece, and general manager Koby Altman put his stamp on that belief recently.

It’s reasonable to be on the Cleveland Cavaliers should trade Kevin Love side of the fence, considering how this summer, the four-year, $120.4 million contract extension (per Spotrac) he signed last summer kicks in.

Yes, Love has been injured very, very often as a member of the Cavaliers, and I won’t dispute that; he only appeared in 22 games in 2018-19, mostly due to reported toe surgery, and he hasn’t played in more than 60 regular season games since 2015-2016, according to Basketball Reference.

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That is, in my opinion, exactly why Cleveland and general manager Koby Altman should not trade Love, though.

With Love’s contract starting this summer, combined with his Browns pre-Baker Mayfield-quarterback-jersey-long-list injury history, I don’t foresee the Cavaliers and Altman getting a great return for Love via trade.

Terry Pluto of the Plain Dealer recently noted how a team that could feasibly want Love could be “a contending team with salary cap room,” but right after suggesting that, Pluto said the issue with that possible scenario is “a contending team probably would not have a high draft pick, which would be something the Cavs would want in a trade for Love.”

Right on, Mr. Pluto.

The Cleveland Cavaliers probably won’t have a chance to acquire a high first-round draft pick, let alone draft pick(s), for Love.

In addition to that, as we’ve hit on countless times here at KJG, when Love was playing a considerable minutes-share this year, Cleveland was more competent.

Altman, per the aforementioned Pluto, highlighted how that was the case in an end-of-season press conference Friday.

"“When Kevin came back, we were playing competitive basketball,” said Altman. “It was fun to watch.”"

Pluto then said how Cleveland was “7-9 in games where Love played at least 15 minutes.”

For the record, the Cleveland Cavaliers finished the season just 19-63, per NBA.com.

Altman would go a bit deeper when it came to Love’s impact on the floor, too, when it came to helping younger pieces (again, as transcribed by Pluto), and also demonstrated that Love is a part of the near future, too.

"“Kevin spiked the growth of our younger guys,” he said. “Kevin is a big part of where we are going as well.”"

This is good to hear from Altman, because Collin Sexton and Cedi Osman, to go with pieces such as Larry Nance Jr. and Ante Zizic, clearly have room to operate in the halfcourt with Love’s inside-out scoring and passing presence on the floor with them.

With a healthier Love on the floor, the ball moved much better in settled offense, and players such as Osman, Sexton, Jordan Clarkson and Nik Stauskas were able to get more room to fire away off catch-and-shoot scenarios.

Outside of Matthew Dellavedova and Deng Adel (who were both only active in seven of 24 games), Love was second to only Ante Zizic on the Cleveland Cavaliers post-All-Star break in terms of on-court true shooting percentage, according to NBA.com.

Along with that, Cleveland’s assist rate was the highest post-All-Star break (again disregarding Dellavedova) with Love on the floor, per NBA.com.

Taking this sort of thing into account, it’s logical for Altman and company to believe that Love projects to be a key part of Cleveland’s future, too, not just younger players such as Sexton, Osman, Zizic and Nance.

Love’s 17.0 points on 47.9 percent effective field goal shooting, to go with 10.9 rebounds and 2.2 assists per game (per Basketball Reference) last year were a nice reminder of that, anyhow

Throughout this season, Love showed that he took a huge step as the primary leader of the Cleveland Cavaliers’ locker room, too, which is really important in the coming years as well, especially to have a key veteran presence behind the scenes for the next head coach of the Cavs.