Cavs: 3 takeaways from Koby Altman’s end-of-season media availability

#3: Altman’s thoughts on Love’s outlook with the Cavs

It was hardly a memorable campaign for Kevin Love, who was severely limited as far as appearances mostly due to a right calf strain. While the condensed season schedule didn’t help Love and all NBA teams had to deal with it, Kevin was active in only 25 games in 2020-21.

Love did have some quality games post-All-Star break, and his presence on the floor as a perimeter shooter does aid help from a spacing standpoint, but it was apparent that much of this past season for him, he was seemingly out of rhythm.

Love hit 36.5 percent of his three-point attempts per outing, albeit there were plenty of instances where he was not shooting nearly that rate. And a few big shooting games comparatively realistically aided the overall deep shooting clip for him.

While Love did again have some quality games, and I thought his rebounding was solid defensively, to go with his secondary playmaking, only 12.2 points per outing in his appearances was underwhelming. He averaged less than 25 minutes per contest, but Love was not nearly as impactful as one still would’ve liked to have seen.

In any case, with Love, though it wasn’t close to the same as a few incidents in 2019-20 in terms of the attitude, his inexcusable display at the Toronto Raptors late in the season when he batted the ball in-bounds was still one that there was no rationalization for.

He did reportedly apologize to teammates, and the situation was reportedly handled internally involving that, per Altman, but it still was ridiculous and it should probably have warranted a suspension, benching and/or fine.

Anyhow, on the plus side, it does seem as though Love is a believer in the Cavs’ young core, based on these comments from Altman, but he is still frustrated about the losing. Altman and the organization do apparently believe Love still is a key leadership presence for young players, though, and that his presence in that way is still felt, even while the “outside” doesn’t believe so, via Davies.

Davies hit on how Altman believes, however, that this is a crucial offseason for Love to get back on track and fully healthy, and that seemingly even with his prior extended absence, that he wasn’t fully back just yet to be his best before. Perhaps next season could be different for Kevin; we’ll have to see.

But objectively, while it would seem to be somewhat far-fetched with him still set to have two years and over $60 million left on his contract, the Cavaliers could, theoretically, perhaps look to waive-and-stretch Love before next season. I wouldn’t expect that to play out, to be clear.

Could a potential buyout occur down the road? In theory sure, albeit we’ll again, have to see on that one.

For now, whether or not he truly believes it, Altman did still state to the media how he views Love as a high impact player for this Cavaliers team and seemingly as a key leadership presence to aid the young guys. So maybe he can get off to a good start next season?

It’s difficult to say what the outlook exactly is for Love within the Cavs’ dynamic, but Altman still is a believer, to some degree it still appears. He wouldn’t say otherwise publicly, though, as fans get.