Cavs: Revisiting Kevin Love’s three best games of 2019-2020 thus far

While there were some bumps in the road involving Cleveland Cavaliers big man Kevin Love, he’s still played very well for the most part. Here, we will be revisiting the three best performances Love’s had thus far in the 2019-20 season.

Cleveland Cavaliers big man Kevin Love had issues earlier this season with a few on-floor/on-bench blow-ups at the Toronto Raptors and against the Oklahoma City Thunder, and he reportedly was hollering at Cleveland general manager Koby Altman after a shootaround against OKC before that matchup, as KJG’s own Dan Gilinsky hit on.

Love would go on to apologize for his actions and downplayed the exchange with Altman (which wasn’t shocking) though, but either way, he’s been seemingly a model teammate since and even more so since J.B. Bickerstaff has taken over at head coach. Plus, looking at Love’s play, this has quietly been one of the most efficient years of his career.

At this current time with the 2019-20 NBA season suspended given concerns regarding the novel coronavirus pandemic, of which you can view recent reported updates here and at this link, per Gilinsky and here, per KJG’s Amadou Sow, Love is currently on pace to have his best two-point percentage of his career.

This is quite the accomplishment considering the amount of time he spent in the paint and the interior dominance he possessed during his time with the Minnesota Timberwolves.

Once he got to the Cavaliers, of which was via trade which also involved the Philadelphia 76ers before the 2014-15 season, which was the first of LeBron James‘ return (who is now a Los Angeles Laker, courtesy of unrestricted free agency in the summer of 2018), Love became a much more perimeter-oriented player.

So, seeing this spike in two-point percentage is a very promising sign. Also, in terms of efficiency, this is just under a career-high season for Love in terms of effective field goal percentage at 55.0 percent, as noted by Basketball Reference. Seeing this spike in efficiency makes Love one of the most reliable players on the Cavaliers to give the ball to, for this current season.

Here, we’ll be taking a look back at Love’s three best games of the 2019-20 season thus far, and I believe that those were against the Detroit Pistons on January 7, the Boston Celtics on December 27 and the matchup against the New York Knicks on February 3. It is important to keep in mind that Love has had many great games and this is my opinion on his three best, and a case could be made for many other games making this list.

We’ll begin with Love’s aforementioned performance against Detroit, which was right after he apologized for his on-floor/on-bench blow-ups in media availability, of which Gilinsky previously touched on.