Cavs: Kevin Love’s ranking of 41 seems about right in Sports Illustrated’s Top 100

In Sports Illustrated’s Top 100 player rankings going into the 2019-20 season, Cleveland Cavaliers big Kevin Love was ranked as the NBA’s 41st-best player, which seems about right.

The Cleveland Cavaliers‘ best player currently and seemingly at least next season is big Kevin Love.

In four-plus seasons with the Cavaliers since being traded to Cleveland by the Minnesota Timberwolves, Love has averaged 17.1 points on 57.2% true shooting (including a three-point shooting hit rate of 37.5%), to go with 10.0 rebounds and 2.1 assists in 31.0 minutes per game (per Basketball Reference).

The biggest issue with Love has been his injury troubles with the Cavaliers, though; in the last three seasons, Love has only played in 60, 59 and 22 games, respectively, per Basketball Reference.

In 2018-19, Love’s reported toe surgery early in the season, combined with the team likely being very cautious to not risk further injury, was the key reason that Love played so little last year, and hopefully to help the progression of young players such as Collin Sexton, Cedi Osman, Darius Garland, Dylan Windler, Kevin Porter Jr. and others, Love can stay healthier in the 2019-20 season, and I’d think from an organizational perspective, beyond, provided he’s on the team (which the team seemingly wants at this point).

When Love is on the floor, as KJG contributors have often referenced, the Cavaliers are much better off, given his ability to space the floor with his three-point shooting stroke, score and make plays for others out of the mid and low post, and rebound the ball at a very high rate.

Though the five-time All-Star is still one of the league’s best bigs when healthy, with him coming off a season where he played in only 22 games, and only shot 41.2% from two-point range (per Basketball Reference), him being ranked number 41 on Sports Illustrated‘s top 100 player rankings (of which no other Cavs were on and the top 10 hasn’t been revealed yet, and was written by Rob Mahoney) going into the 2019-20 season seems about right to me.

Love is again, a very talented offensive player that is multifaceted as a scorer inside and out, and with the way Cleveland head coach John Beilein will seemingly want to utilize Love and Larry Nance Jr. as big man playmakers a good amount in coming years, Love will clearly be invaluable for the Cavaliers.

That being said, we are more than aware of Love’s on-ball defensive limitations at this point as fans of the Cleveland Cavaliers, in that Love is not a player that can realistically defend quality face-up or post-up/rollings 4’s and/or 5’s for long stretches, given his lack of quickness laterally, and in regards to the latter, he doesn’t seem to often given potential injury risk, at least it seems that way as the Cavaliers have historically put Tristan Thompson in those situations to preserve Love.

Love’s position as a team defender is usually pretty good and the intention is often right for him as a rotator/closeout man to shooters, and Love will take his share of charges to help out teammates after opposing penetration and he is an outstanding defensive rebounder (a defensive rebounding rate of 29.0% with Cleveland, per Basketball Reference).

The overall defensive limitations of Love are why his ranking of 41 by SI seems about right again for me, and the players near him in the rankings help to add context to Love’s ranking.

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Paul Millsap, a steady contributor on both ends of the floor for the Denver Nuggets as a scorer (though he had only 12.6 points per game last season), rebounder and passer, and a player that defend 3’s and 4’s at a pretty high level when fully healthy, seems about right at 43, and Marc Gasol, a great interior defender and rotator, and serviceable floor spacer, good post-up/rolling presence and high level passer, also seems about right at 42.

Both of those players are four and three-time All-Stars in their careers, but neither has had quite the inside-out scoring capability of Love, who is Cleveland’s first option offensively when healthy, and not so in recent seasons, really, but they are in a similar realm in terms of their contributions to contending teams (though Love’s not on one right now).

One could perhaps make an argument that Oklahoma City Thunder center Steven Adams being at 40 over Love shouldn’t be the case, and I’d personally rather have the floor spacing of Love on the Cleveland Cavaliers in the coming years, but as Mahoney hit on in regards to Adams, it is evident that Adams is one of the league’s best screeners, given his unbelievable strength, and in today’s NBA, that is so crucial in whether or not teams win games.

Additionally, Mahoney was also spot-on in noting about Adams how “no player in the league had a more profound impact on his team’s defensive rebounding last season.”

With how Adams clears the defensive glass, it makes others around him in better position to get the ball and go and potentially get run-outs.

Along with that, Adams is a very good interior defender that alters plenty of shots, as evidenced by only seven teams conceding a lower opponent shooting percentage inside of five feet (per NBA.com) and great rolling threat that is an excellent off-ball screener, too, and the case can definitely be made that he’s a better player going into the 2019-20 season right now than Love, a player that again, has struggled mightily with injuries in the last few seasons and didn’t have that great of a season last year when he was in.

Also, another player that was near Love at 39 was Victor Oladipo, who when healthy (his season was cut short last year due to a reported ruptured quad tendon), is arguably the best two-way shooting guard in the NBA.

He had 18.8 points and was putting up career-highs in rebounds (5.6) and assists (5.2) before being out for the remainder of last season, (per Basketball Reference), and with his ability to smother opposing primary playmakers and get his hands constantly in passing lanes leading to easy opportunities for his teammates and himself, I see him as being a better player than Love right now.

So again, Love is a really good offensive big and rebounder for the Cleveland Cavaliers when healthy, but defensively, he’s limited, and availability is a huge question mark. That’s why I’d say where Sports Illustrated has Love at number 41 in their top 100 going into the 2019-20 season seems about right.