Throughout most of this season, Kevin Love has provided a meaningful boost for the Cleveland Cavaliers, with him shifting to a bench role this go-round. Love had struggled with injuries in recent seasons prior to this one, such as with him only being active for 25 games last season, mostly because of a calf injury.
It was reportedly likely heading into the season that Love could be moved to a bench role, and frankly, leading into this campaign, it was difficult to know what to expect involving Love’s outlook with the Cavs.
Fortunately, this has been, for the most part, a very successful transition for Love and the Cavaliers. This season, in what’s been a reduced minutes-share, Love has had 13.7 points per contest and knocked in 38.8 percent of his three-point attempts, in what’s been 22.2 minutes per outing.
There are going to still be some games where he’s off, given the nature of his newer role this season, but by and large, Love has helped this still young Cavs squad in his minutes, which have typically come off the bench. The obvious is the deep shooting element, and for Cleveland from here, they will still need his catch-and-shoot play for stretches to make a difference, ideally, and his spacing element is always going to help.
Love hasn’t had it going as much in recent games in mid-post or occasionally low-post looks, but in his last nine contests prior to Wednesday’s close L to the Philadelphia 76ers, he had still hit 38.8 percent from three, on 5.4 deep attempts per game. Even with the inconsistencies at times, he still can help get other guys open with his off-ball presence, and Love is a quality passing big, so I don’t discount that, either.
To echo our own Cyrus Felger’s take, I thought Love should’ve had more playing time against Philly too, though he was only 2-of-7 from three in that one. He finished with 10 points and seven rebounds in 17 minutes.
All of that said, one area of Love’s game will continue to be crucial in upcoming games, particularly with Jarrett Allen potentially out for the rest of the regular season still due to his fractured finger.
Love’s rebounding, especially defensively, is all the more important in this Cavs stretch run.
To reiterate, when it comes to Love, who is second all-time in Cavs history in threes made, everybody digs the long ball. He’s undoubtedly one of Cleveland’s best shooters, if not the Wine and Gold’s best pure catch-and-shoot threat, and in his minutes, we’ll still see him get those shots up.
But while I personally would like to see some more Moses Brown minutes for the Cavaliers in some matchups, and he should seemingly be given a second 10-day deal, at minimum, with Allen’s injury, either way, Love’s defensive rebounding will be huge. Brown did help give the Cavs energy in that Philly game in the first half, as an aside.
Circling back to Love in this sense, though, on the year, Love has had 7.2 rebounds per outing overall, and per-36 minutes, that clip for him has been 11.7.
What’s been more noteworthy from Love in that regard is that the vet is 15th in defensive percentage this season among qualified players, per NBA.com. That’s among players that have averaged at least 15.0 minutes per game, for context, and Love’s defensive rebounding rate of 25.9 percent leads the Cavs.
Needless to say, as the Cavaliers look to secure an elusive-LeBron James-led postseason berth for the first time since 1998, and with the Eastern Conference so tightly-contested, that glass cleaning, defensively more so, will be key from Love. As we noted, with Allen out, that’s all the more apparent.
Granted, Love’s not going to be playing nearly the minutes-share of Evan Mobley, who has been filling it pretty well at his natural 5 spot in Allen’s absence, but just generally, with Cleveland having defensive rebounding issues this season often, that’s something the team can always rely on with Love when he’s in.
Mobley, objectively, however, has had issues with defensive rebounding positioning throughout the season, even while he is showing improvement signs, partly due to his still fairly slight frame for a 7-footer and big. We’ll see Love in with Mobley still for plenty of stretches in this stretch run, for what it’s worth, to help provide a shooting and offensive lift.
Anyway, with how effective Love is on the defensive glass from a positioning and strength standpoint, that’ll be another significant area where he can help the Cavaliers. And whether or not Brown gets meaningful minutes to come, that’ll be big from Love when he’s in there.
This Cavs team has to find a way with Lauri Markkanen and others to rebound defensively better, as KJG’s Josh Cornelissen demonstrated in a recent piece laying out how Brown individually can help, though.
But rest assured, Love will always do his part in that regard.