Cleveland Cavaliers: Grading Kevin Love’s 2019-20 season thus far
By Dan Gilinsky
The Cleveland Cavaliers have gotten solid play out of Kevin Love on most occasions, but there were some on-floor issues related to his attitude that he’s seemingly cleared up. Here, we’ll grade Love’s overall play thus far in 2019-20.
It hasn’t been all smooth sailing in the 2019-20 season to this point involving the Cleveland Cavaliers and Kevin Love‘s dynamic.
Love previously had on-floor/on-bench outbursts in-game against the Oklahoma City Thunder in early January in which he was frustrated with Collin Sexton and threw a dodgeball elimination-style pass that was unnecessary at Cedi Osman.
It was previously reported from The Athletic‘s Joe Vardon and Shams Charania, also of Stadium (subscription required) that Love blew up at Cavs general manager Koby Altman about the direction of the team following Cleveland’s shootaround before that prior OKC game. Love would later completely downplay that, and touched on how his exchange was seemingly regarding a fine, but things were rocky.
Love did apologize for his on-bench outburst at the Toronto Raptors on New Year’s Eve in media availability in early January, though, and since that time it seems, Love’s been a model teammate, even going back to pre-All-Star break, in which John Beilein was still Cleveland’s head coach.
Beilein, who was an awful fit, has since stepped down and has been re-assigned to an unspecified role within the organization, but what has been nice to see has been the Cavs and Love, in particular, seemingly have a good rapport with J.B. Bickerstaff.
Bickerstaff took over the head coaching reigns after the All-Star break, and Cleveland was a respectable 5-6 under Bickerstaff leading into the NBA’s novel coronavirus/social distancing-induced season suspension. It’s uncertain as to whether or not the current season will eventually resume, at least in some capacity, down the road.
Either way, though, when you factor in the vast majority of the season thus far, in general, Love has been solid overall as an inside-out threat, and offensively, I’ve been mostly pleased with his play.