These 3 bench players will be awesome for Cavs next season

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Kevin Love, Cleveland Cavaliers. (Photo by Ken Blaze-USA TODAY Sports) /

These 3 bench players will be awesome for Cavs next season: Kevin Love

Any discussion of the Cavaliers’ bench has to start with Kevin Love, the onetime star who now comes off the bench. Many stars struggle with a transition from a high-minute, high-touch role to a lesser one, and Love in particular has been yanked around a bit, from offensive hub in Minnesota to third banana with LeBron James and Kyrie Irving, to lone wolf as the rebuild began. Now the team has asked him to accept a smaller role to help the team win, and to his credit he has stepped up and accepted a bench role.

More than accepting it, Love has thrived in it. He is an absolute gunner off the bench for the Cavs, bombing away to the tune of 10.3 3-pointers per-36 minutes. That rate ranked eighth in the league among players who averaged at least 20 minutes per game last season, with players like Stephen Curry, Duncan Robinson and Buddy Hield ahead of him. In other words, he has become the league’s highest-volume stretch big. He also has deep range, firing from well outside the arc like he’s shooting from Paris or London.

That worked out really well for Love, as he averaged 13.6 points on extremely high efficiency. He also chipped in 7.2 rebounds per game, which to spin the minutes requirement around ranked sixth in the league among players who played less than 25 minutes per game last season. His combination of shooting, scoring and rebounding propelled him to a second-place finish in Sixth Man of the Year voting.

Love was most frequently paired with Cedi Osman last season, and with Osman likely on the fringe of the rotation this season you can expect that Love and Ochai Agbaji will team up frequently. Otheriwse the Cavs loved to pair Love with Evan Mobley and Isaac Okoro to help balance out his defensive deficiencies. Early in the season he had instant chemistry with former teammate Ricky Rubio. Lineups this year with Mobley, Rubio and an offensive hub – Darius Garland or Collin Sexton – will thrive with Love spacing the court and destroying any space afforded him.