A similar outcome for Cavs’ Kevin Love for next season is attainable

This season was a resurgent one for Cleveland Cavaliers stretch big Kevin Love. It wasn’t the most shocking thing that Love was moved to a bench role, as was rumored to likely play out before the season began, but it was tough to know what to expect.

Love had an injury-riddled 2020-21 campaign, in recent past years before this season, there were some issues with him having visible frustration on the floor in-game. The Cavaliers themselves were earlier in a full-rebuild, too.

Love had some issues, in fairness, but even with him seemingly bought-in before the season, and the team having some new meaningful contributors, it wasn’t simple to project how much of an impact Love could have.

To his credit, though, he stayed bought-in and was from the jump this season in that move to a bench role, and he often gave the team a lift. His catch-and-shoot play was crucial, and Love made his presence felt on the defensive glass, at times in the mid-post still, and his heady passing helped.

Now, Love’s deal is set to expire after next season, which will be age-34 campaign. He’s not been nearly worth what his four-year, $120.4 million contract extension was back when that was signed in the summer of 2018, and he’s set to make $28.9 million in 2022-23. Injuries have played a sizeable part in that with Love.

That said, this recently-concluded season did show that in this key bench shooter role, where he can give the squad a lift for 20-25 minutes per game regularly, he’s probably maximized at this point in his career. I also believe that how he played in 2021-22 can be replicated, at least to a large extent, in 2022-23.

A similar outcome for Love in this bench role for the Cavs is attainable in 2022-23, if he’s mostly healthy.

Love was outstanding for Cleveland in this reduced role this season, as the team was able to preserve him throughout the year, and it was tough for him to be more effective, honestly.

He connected on 39.2 percent of his three-point attempts, and had the third-most made threes in a single season in Cavs history. That’s not too shabby from the vet, especially with the amount of injuries the team had endured in this campaign, and with how he’s coming off a season where he was active in just 25 games.

Along with the catch-and-shoot play, Love again did help stabilize things for stretches as a solid ball-mover/secondary playmaker, as he’s done often in his time with the Cavaliers. In that realm, it was notable that per Cleaning The Glass, Love’s assist rate of 15.1 percent placed in the 82nd percentile among bigs.

While the team does need to improve its defensive rebounding positioning overall, it was meaningful that he individually had a defensive rebounding rate of 25.8 percent, which was impressive, regardless of the role he was playing.

He had 11.6 boards per-36 minutes, which was his most since 2018-19, for further context. That was in a year where he wasn’t in action much, though, as an aside.

So, while I’m not going to suggest he’ll be a finalist again for Sixth Man of the Year next season for the Wine and Gold, as he was this season, Love putting up near 13.6 points and 7.2 rebounds per game (as he did this year), efficiently seems very attainable. Of course, there’s others that’ll again be involved, but I’d still imagine Love could get solid play with Evan Mobley, Jarrett Allen and other guys.

This is health-permitting with him, clearly, as is always the case when projecting onward with Love, who will be in his age-34 season next year. But I’m optimistic that could play out again, based on how the team managed his minutes in 2021-22, and it was a significant boost, more often than not, for the Cavs.

Maybe if there’s another very successful season for him in 2022-23, Love could stick around, if the two sides could come to a fairly team-friendly agreement, or perhaps the team and him could consider that as the offseason progresses. We’ll have to see; he could still potentially be an expiring asset, though.