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

#2: December 27 at Boston 

In this matchup against the Boston Celtics, the Cavaliers were objectively over-matched. The Celtics had their their full roster at full strength and when they are at full strength, they have the potential to contend for a NBA Finals appearance.

Even so, with the Celtics’ weakest area of their roster being big men it gave Love the opportunity to go on an offensive explosion. In the game, Love led the Cavs in points, as was noted by ESPN. Once again, he scored 30 points in a game that finished in a Cavaliers’ loss. This was another efficient game from Love in which he shot six-for-eleven from deep and four-for-five inside the arc.

He tied with Cedi Osman as the team leader in assists in the starting unit for the game as well, with both having four assists apiece. Love also tied for the team lead in rebounds, as he and Thompson both pulled down seven boards for the game.

Defensively, Love didn’t have a steal or block, but the club in general had an especially rough night in terms of team defense for most of this one, and even with the Cavs making a few nice runs, I’m not putting those defensive issues a whole lot on Love. Love again was carrying the Cavaliers’ offense during the course of the game, too.

Also, with the Celtics starting three athletic wing players at the shooting guard, small forward, and power forward positions in Jaylen Brown, Gordon Hayward and Jayson Tatum, it would have made keeping up with the Celtics when they were on offense very difficult for Love in a number of instances either way as a rotator/switchout player, as Love has struggled mightily defending quick, athletic wings when it’s been needed in his career.

Nonetheless, this was a very impressive game for Love against extremely tough competition.

Lastly, Love’s best performance of the 2019-20 season thus far has been against the Knicks on February 3.