Cleveland Cavaliers big Kevin Love withdraws from Team USA

What a weird world we live in. Just last night, some of the contributors from KJG and I were discussing Cleveland Cavaliers big Kevin Love‘s involvement with Team USA.

We all agreed that we wanted to see Love play well, and possibly raise his stock, or regain his pre-injury form. But unfortunately, a wrench was thrown into that equation this morning.

Adrian Wojnarowski of ESPN reported this morning that Love had withdrawn from the team.

Love’s selection for the Olympics was immediately met with controversy. Albeit it turns out that he wouldn’t end up playing with Team USA in Tokyo anyway.

But based off last season/recent years, Love’s selection originally, was an odd one. Love only played in 25 games for the Cavs this past year, and only averaged just over 12 points. He was and still is trying to regain form from a calf injury. With Bradley Beal being knocked out of the competition (COVID-19-related), and Jerami Grant being placed in COVID-19 health and safety protocols, the United States could have used Love a bunch when they got to Tokyo.

This is another step in the wrong direction for the Cavs big.

Love’s decision to withdraw from the 2020 Olympics (they’re being branded that way) is another step in the wrong direction for the power forward from UCLA. He’s been battling injuries often since he arrived in Cleveland.

However, he has started to draw ire from Cavs fans for his lack of play. On top of that, in late April, Love had a very public outburst during a game against the Toronto Raptors in which, due to frustration from officiating/how the game was going, he batted an in-bounds pass into play, leading to an easy Toronto triple.

With Love’s injuries and Collin Sexton’s unwillingness to pass the ball, the Cavs have another mess to clean up this offseason.

For Love, it’s slowly developed into a sad story for the big man. After coming over from the Minnesota Timberwolves in a trade before the 2014-2015 season, he’s struggled to find his rhythm with the team. It only got worse for him when LeBron James left the team before the 2018-19 season.

His numbers have dropped significantly, and he hasn’t meshed well with the team Cavaliers general manager Koby Altman built around him. In the end, we don’t really know the specifics of why he withdrew. One could assume it’s because he wants to take it slow to get back to full health. Any way you slice it, this isn’t a good look for Love.

Any thoughts about his stock rising in the 2020 Olympics, or him regaining pre-injury form, have been shot out of the air before take-off. Hopefully Love can get back to a resemblance of his old self at some point, I just doubt it will come anytime soon.