Cleveland Cavaliers: Grading Kevin Love’s 2019-20 season thus far

Factoring in Love’s overall play

Looking at the overall play of Love, he’s essentially been pretty steady, and for a team playing so many young pieces big minutes, that matters.

Is Love realistically a star at this point in his career?

I’d say that ship has sailed, and him being set to make $91.5 million over the next three seasons following 2019-20 is not ideal, but as Cleveland.com’s Chris Fedor essentially touched on, the Cavs still view Love as a valuable piece that can help to a large degree lead them forward in this rebuild. I get that mindset in them not just wanting to trade him simply to trade him, too.

Love has shown that he’s still a piece that helps youngsters such as Darius Garland and Sexton on the floor, and he’s clearly been a leader off it recently and I’m sure his teammates value that in really high regard. He donated $100,000 through his fund to help compensate Rocket Mortgage FieldHouse employees/game event staff affected by the NBA’s season suspension (and the Cavs have paid that personnel as if games remaining were being played as normal per the team).

Love seemingly set an amazing trend among NBA players in relation to helping out their arenas’ employees/game event staff, too, and Love clearly is a player that’s going to make an impact off the floor, and he believes that athletes should be “community leaders” during this such difficult time in relation to the COVID-19 pandemic.

Swinging back to Love’s on the floor play, he again has been pretty solid for the most part, and has clearly been Cleveland’s best floor spacer and realistically, shooter. I’d also imagine the Cavs would still like to see how the potential dynamic works between Love and Andre Drummond, who is reportedly likely to opt into his $28.8 million player option for next season, per Fedor.

Drummond, who also paired up with JBL Audio to donate 10,000 pairs of headphones to schools in the Detroit and Cleveland area, and stepped up in a massive way and donated $160,000 to COVID-19 relief efforts, is another player that could feasibly be a player that Cleveland would like to have around for young pieces. Additionally, again, I’d expect the Cavs to want to see the Dre-K-Love duo have more time together, and they had some nice outings leading up to the season’s suspension.

Anyhow, when factoring in Love’s play on both ends thus far in the 2019-20 season, which may or may not play out to some extent down the road, I’d again say he’s been solid, but I’d like to have seen a bit more offensively. Defensively, he was anything but stellar.

Love’s overall grade thus far in 2019-20: B

I’d say giving Love about a give-or-take 91 for the offensive end to this point and around a 76ish defensively when factoring in his improved effort level and constant defensive rebounding is feasible.

That’d result in a grade of an overall 83.5/84-ish.

As Fedor did allude to, though, considering Love has seemingly been a subject of trade rumors for years, it’s only natural to expect the rumor mill to heat up involving Love whenever the offseason and/or the next season eventually starts.