Cavs Player Grades: Kevin Love excels in move to bench role
By Dan Gilinsky
Love’s defensive play for the Cavs in 2021-22
Moving on to his defensive play this season, it was obvious that he was not going to be a stalwart on that end of the floor for Cleveland.
Love has never been a great on-ball defender, and with his athletic limitations when it comes to quickness, and him not being a rim protection presence, not much that is, there will struggles for him still on defense. Love was in his age-33 season, though, and coming into the season, with how Love had often had injury problems, nobody could’ve expected him to necessarily be an impact defensive player, frankly.
I’m not going to say that there still weren’t sequences or stretches where Love was not targeted when he was on the floor; those were inevitable, and down the stretch of the season with the teams’ injuries, that played out at times.
But, objectively, Love’s effort level on defense was much better this season than in recent years past, likely with his role change to a bench contributor coincided with that. And Love was healthy this season, aside from an absence due to COVID-19 health and safety protocols in November.
So, in fairness to Love, while there were still some on-ball ups and downs, he did compete better against opposing forwards/bigs at times on that end, and I have to give Love credit for his help as a team defender.
His rotations were more timely in contests to shooters, even with some lapses here and there, and the effort, generally, was much better, and the team benefited from that. Also, with Love mostly healthy, and in seemingly a way better place mentally, that played into him being tied for the league lead this season in charges drawn with 26, per NBA.com’s hustle data.
To reiterate, there were some struggles for Love on defense this season, but I thought based on the expectations, he did a pretty decent job for the most part in his role. The contests to shooters and effort level were positives, much more than not, in my opinion, and if he sticks around at least for next season, I’ll take that.