Love as 6MOY for Cavs would ‘mean a lot,’ but either way, he’ll be crucial

Coming into this 2022-23 season, I’d still expect Kevin Love to have a notable role for the Cleveland Cavaliers.

Last year, he was shifted to a supersub role, and while it was difficult to project how that’d work out, it was huge for him and his preservation, and the team.

Love’s season averages didn’t necessarily jump out in comparison to his other big seasons, but him having 13.6 points and 7.2 rebounds in only 22.5 minutes per game was noteworthy. In a move to a reduced role as a bench contributor, Love often gave the Cavaliers quite the spark off the pine, and he connected on 39.2 percent of his 6.4 three-point attempts per contest in 2021-22.

For his efforts on a Cavs team that had a very surprising campaign, and nearly made the postseason, Love finished second in the voting for the NBA’s Sixth Man of the Year award. Tyler Herro of the Miami Heat ended up winning that convincingly, but that doesn’t discount Love’s effect on games last year for the Cavaliers.

And when asked about it recently, Love gave his flowers to Herro, a player he said was an “All-Star” off the bench, via Spencer Davies of BasketballNews.com. From there, Love did mention how him potentially winning the Sixth Man of the Year this coming season seemingly would “mean a lot,” particularly with this Cavs group, though, and with him moving to a different role of late.

Whether or not Love accomplishes that feat, he’ll again be crucial for the Cavs in the season ahead.

Love gave his credit to Herro for taking home that Sixth Man of the Year for his efforts for the Heat last season, and while Herro played far more than Love, I guess I do get the reasoning for him ultimately having those honors. Granted, the dude played 32.6 minutes per contest, but I digress.

Regardless of whether or not Love this go-round wins the Sixth Man of the Year for the 2022-23 season, it is still apparent that for these Cavaliers, he should have a significant role in his bench minutes, I’d assume.

As we alluded to, Love was a key cog for Cleveland’s bench last season, and with Lauri Markkanen being a piece involved in the Donovan Mitchell trade with the Utah Jazz, I’d expect Love to again be a go-to catch-and-shoot target for stretches. He would’ve been anyhow, but that reinforced how he should be a player the Cavs look to to provide energy, and at times, could be involved in closing lineups still.

Love obviously was not playing the minutes-share he was earlier in his tenure with the Cavaliers in the LeBron James return days, however, him having 21.8 points per-36 minutes was impressive last year. For his career, he’s averaged 20.5 points per-36 minutes, for what it’s worth.

Now, again, one has to take that sort of thing with a grain of salt, and Love is set to enter his age-34 season, and the injury concerns with him are always going to be there. We know that, and in 2020-21, he appeared in only 25 games, a 72-game season notwithstanding.

Based on how the team managed him last season, though, I do believe that have the blueprint for how to best utilize him, and while he won’t have the role of Darius Garland, Donovan Mitchell or Evan Mobley offensively, Love should still be a key offensive player in his minutes. He won’t be leading the team in three-pointers made in 2022-23, like he did last year, but his shooting impact, his passing chops and defensive rebounding will still be crucial when he is in there.

Love could be a potential trade candidate, with him set to be expiring after this coming season, as an aside. However, I do believe he could very well stick around, and if he thrives again this year similarly to last season, perhaps he/his representation and the Cavs could come to an agreement on a reasonable deal for a year or two next offseason.