Cleveland Cavaliers: 5 players who have had biggest impact in 2019-20

#3: Kevin Love

It hasn’t been the smoothest year when it comes to the Cavs and Love’s dynamic. Earlier in the season, Love shouted seemingly at general manager Koby Altman regarding the team’s direction after a shootaround, per a report from The Athletic‘s Joe Vardon and Shams Charania, also of Stadium (subscription required) of which Love completely downplayed and touched on how that was essentially in relation to a fine.

Love also had on-floor/on-bench episodes in games at the Toronto Raptors and versus the Oklahoma City Thunder, of which he later apologized for at least.

Since then, though, Love’s been seemingly a model teammate, and though he hasn’t been All-Star worthy, really, he has been really solid overall as an inside-out threat, secondary playmaker and defensive rebounder.

Somewhat silently, while Love has again been Cleveland’s best floor spacer, and has hit 37.4 percent of his three-point attempts, he’s had a near career-best 55.0 percent effective field goal shooting rate, and has had 17.6 points, 9.8 rebounds and 3.2 assists per game.

While playing most of his minutes with several young players hasn’t led to a ton of winning, I’m still pretty satisfied with Love’s play this season, and his impact game-to-game as a floor spacer, mid/low-post presence, big man passer and defensive glass cleaner has been really steady.

Love’s had his struggles on-ball defensively, hasn’t been consistent when it comes to closeouts, and still is not capable of switching out in pick-and-roll, but what he’s brought offensively has helped opening up driving and cutting lanes for Sexton, Osman and others.

With how much defensive attention Love always has drawn when he’s been out there, which has been on most occasions for Cleveland thus far in 2019-20, he’s still put up nice numbers.

Moreover, while him being due to make $91.5 million over the next three seasons following this current one is anything but a bargain, with his game-to-game impact as a really capable inside-out big, nice passer and elite defensive rebounder, it wasn’t shocking to hear from Cleveland.com’s Chris Fedor that the Cavs still view Love as “a valuable piece” in this rebuild.