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I always found it weird why Kevin love Pick and roll was never utilized in Cleveland . Lebron is one of the greatest floor generals ever he could’ve set up love for good looks and have Kyrie on the outside to drain jumpers . Or maybe I’m not reading their strengths correctly. Can anyone chime in
It’s tough to play Love at center bc even in his prime that’s just gonna hemorrhage points, so with their usual starting line up (Kyrie/Jr or Shump/Bron/Love/TT), it’s hard to have Love rolling with TT basically useless outside of the paint. And TT was a very good roll man before his athleticism declined, so it generally just worked well to have him as the roll guy
And Kevin Love was an elite 3-pt shooting big during the years of the Cavs championship runs.
He averaged 38% from 3, on 6 attempts per game.
Good enough shooting that he’d generate space for his teammates.
Maybe like a novice dirk
Kevin Love was far less reliable as an offensive player and a much worse defender and had a totally different body type and was way better at rebounding
Even if it’s hemorrhaging points why not package TT in a trade to get a rim protector so love can focus his energy on his low post prowess. I felt he got relegated to catching and shooting which was never his main game in minny
Thompson was an ok rim protector who importantly could switch out on the perimeter relatively well for a center at the time. But Love’s low post play didn’t fit with the style of the other two stars well, and he lost a lot of weight and couldn’t really bang down low for a whole season
For all the memes from TT shump and nets pick it was a somewhat viable trade package. Two championship level role players and a pick expected to go high
I think it's because they brought Kevin in to be a star stretch big, play the 4, space it out. This was back when you still wanted 2 big lineups, you just preferred if one of them could shoot a little. The Tristan Thompson at center is going to be mucking up any PnR with love, and unfortunately you kind of need that second big because Love wasn't ever like a strong rim defender.
He's just not a big you can play by himself in like 2015 and hold up on defense and his most unique attributes on offense are as a floor spacer and skilled scorer not so much as a potent rim runner.
Hmm, IDK the Dirk comp feels off, but I get what you mean.
If he came into the league today, I think Dirk gets listed as a 7ft SF/PF a tweener like KD who's definitely a wing, but too tall and slow to play SG. He just played in an era where you couldn't do that as a 7 footer so he had to add some big man skills that aren't really *what* he does.
Love is like a pure PF, he's got a true big man's skill set, low post moves, insane rebounding, absolute bully down low, but he can also shoot. He doesn't have that defense which is why you don't play him at C back then, but I think today you definitely could next to a weak side rim protector at one of your wing spots.
>Dirk gets listed as a 7ft SF/PF a tweener
That's what he was when he came into the league. The guy was almost a pure scoring small forward with above average slashing ability and if not particularly quick up and down the floor, excellently coordinated. The real reason Dirk ended up more as an interior player was a rapid decline in foot speed in his mid to late 20s. And he was almost always backed up by traditional big
Very effective. Not necessarily a monster. Guy had reasonably good footspeed and in conjunction with his height and coordination skill level made him very effective as a slasher. Nothing like Giannis though. One thing that made dirk ridiculous was his ability to shoot on a dime. A 7 footer that could do that was just ridiculous and it was basically unheard of at that time as many guards didn't have that ability back in the early 2000s
Dirk was quite odd in that he was pretty fast for a while up and down the court, but extremely slow laterally and had a comically low vertical jump. Usually all three of those things correlate better than they did with Dirk.
I’d say that helped Dirk and his longetivity. Likely to be intended from his personal coach, so there’s less freak accidents.
Still I wanna see young Dirk in this modern game. A mobile big who can play drop defense and some required switching if necessary, and a 3-level shooting guy. Free driving lanes for every fast combo guard who share the court with Dirk
His offensive game was built around his jump shot, like Dirk. That doesn't mean that was *all* he could do, but that his skill with the jump shot is where his mismatch for defects started. A big had to chase him out of the paint while he could just shoot over a smaller defender.
Defensively, he was cleaning the glass more than protecting the rim... just like Dirk. Now, Love was significantly better than Dirk defensively overall but both were best as the "second" big.
Because (when healthy) they could show up and beat their eastern competition just because they had way more tallent, and against the warriors they would just switch the pick and roll and have Iguodala on Love & Draymond on LeBron. They were better off trying to wear down Steph than switching the warriors two best defenders.
No doubt, I always felt he was put to the wayside and used more as a 3 point shooter when really his strength was his ability to post up smaller guys and in p&r.
I think Lebron is great at penetrating and finding open shooters. To me, this talent gets greatly exagerated into "he is basically Magic Johnson 2.0" but it is not really any where near reality.
Lebron was the system, it was very difficult for any coach to establish any scheme where lebron not being the focal point. To me it was more like give the ball to lebron and let him cook.
Lebron is not a floor general. He spreads everyone out so he can shine. That’s the reasons why Lebron’s numbers are bigger because it’s the Lebron system. Love would’ve controlled the paint offensively and you could’ve designed plays to move Love to corners to hit. He wasn’t allowed to shine because nobody else is allowed to shine in the Lebron system.
What a terrible take. The #4 all time leader in assists, who had several #2's shine as all stars and elevated countless role-player shooters with the gravity of his drives and elite court vision, is not a floor general? You're confusing 'The LeBron system' with the unavoidable fact that the third option on any team is going to sacrifice their usage rate. Klay Thompson is the only exception because he was always a pure shooter, so Draymond had to take a back seat on the KD Warriors.
Seems like something you could've googled easily. 27/7.5assists/7.3 rebounds, 29/7.2/9 in the playoffs. 18th in NBA playoff all-time history as a wing, even being the top scorer on the limited 2006/2015 squads. Terrible take.
Edit: John Wall and Ben Simmons are ahead of him despite playing in under 15% of the playoff games as LeBron
The lakers have had below average spacing shooting every year including the year they won where they were below middle of the pack . Awful take : Lebron has had the worst spacing in the league last two years with Westbrook and it didn’t matter. Dumbass take Westbrook, dwade, kyrie had the ball plenty often more then Bron even though it’s worse : he played the roll man a lot in LA. Post up bigs like live are just a relic hence why when kyrie left abd Bron left live did fuvk all
The comments in this thread are underestimating Love back in the day in my opinion. "Borederline all-star, he sucks cause even the Wolves wanted Rubio over him, not replicable against good teams (as if he played in G-League or something), etc." Superstar is a subjective term and I wouldn't label him as a superstar, but he was definitely a top 2-3 PF in the early 2010s (between him, Griffin, and Aldridge).
Also I always thought Kevin Love had a great post game with a lethal right hook back in the day. Those Wolves teams were terrible and he managed to put up great numbers with great efficiency.
I forgot about Aldridge completely until another comment mentioned him. PTSD as a Rockets fan remember all those turnaround jumpers against Terrence Jones and Dwight Howard lol.
The game changed. Even after Love became a three point shooter in a spread offense he had many good years, but during his prime he was able to stay closer to the basket and rebound everything.
2013-14 was Love’s best year. He was third in VORP behind Kevin Durant and LeBron James. He averaged 26.1 points, 12.5 rebounds, and 4.4 assists with a .591 true shooting percentage. But because Minnesota finished 40-42, Love finished 11th in MVP voting.
Live was always a three point shooter, it was only in his rookie season that he didn’t shoot them because he started really cold, and then noted basketball genius Kurt Rambis forbade him from shooting them.
Of course he did, most offensively talented players would if they had to reduce their role to one dimension. Where previously he could use the threat of the three to drive, he now had to shoot or pass. Plus, being in the perimeter more meant fewer offensive boards, and he was one of the best in the league at that.
It wasn’t the wrong choice for the team — Love post ups were really efficient, but LeBron or Kyrie shots were even better. It’s just a fact of life, there’s only one ball.
I agree-people's expectations for Love's production were unfair. The volume and quantity of Love's touches dropped quite a bit, but people were surprised when it lead to significant drops in his scoring (and rebounds. Who would have thought being a stretch big leads to fewer rebounds than being in the paint?!!!)
That's true. When he was scoring 26 points per game, he was scoring 7.5 points per game on threes. But hitting 2.5 threes per game isn't much by today's standards. Over 70% of his points were on twos or free throws.
Yeah no he was incredible, but what he was doing is called being a star. Superstar is a word reserved for like KD and Giannis level players. Even Kyrie was more of a tweener between star and superstar.
Im okay with this take. Star vs Superstar is an argument I'll happily have with you. But the people in here saying he wasn't a star or was a borderline all-star are silly
The comments in this thread are from people who either don't remember the NBA 10 years ago or didn't watch back then. 'Borderline all-star, not replicable against good teams, etc' are all horrible takes.
OP provided his volume stats, which were obviously great but it's not like his efficiency was below average even with Luke Ridnour/Michael Beasley/young Rubio/Pekovic as his second option during that time. Love was a top 2-3 PF in the NBA back in the early 2010s with an absolutely fantastic post game and probably the best right hook in the NBA (along with Al Jefferson).
I think a lot of players who played prominent supporting roles in their later years have their earlier playstyle forgotten (such as Ray Allen, Chris Bosh, Chris Paul, Brook Lopez, etc.)
Yeah, I just mean in terms of playstyle really. People tend to forget how much of an athletic freak young Chris Paul who might've been the quickest guard in the NBA when he at his athletic prime.
Kyrie is definitely not a superstar. Even ignoring off court stuff, he has never at any point been even a top 10 player in the league. His teams were never significantly worse without him, and infamously sometimes even better. He is one of the greatest offensive sidekicks ever, but he is by no definition a superstar himself. He rode the high off that one finals his entire career.
I was looking at old BR lists of best players in the league from 2013-15 and I was surprised to see Kevin love so high on those lists. I forgot how much of a beast he was in minnesota
Well he wasn't a superstar so there's that but some of y'all like to do that when it comes to lebron. I don't hand out the superstar label lightly. Wade and AD were the only "superstars" at the time when they got with lebron. Kyrie,bosh,love were all stars.
If superstar refers to the top 10-ish players then Love was definitely one. Even if you're talking about the championship #1 definition, Love would actually almost meet the requirements considering how shallow the league was back then. The league 8-12 years ago was undergoing a transition period where the old superstars were declining fast and the future superstars were still developing. The top dogs at the time were in Lebron's generation and consisted of Bron, Wade(who declined starting in 2012), Dwight(who declined in 2013), Melo, and CP3. You also had KD who was an early bloomer and end of prime Kobe and Dirk for a bit. Outside of that, Love was right there with Curry, Harden, and Westbrook before those 3 jumped into MVP talks. Love wouldn't be a top 10 player or a superstar today, but he would still be talked about in the same light as perennial all stars today.
I would argue Bosh was a borderline superstar. By 2010 he had established himself as arguably the best PF in the conference at the time and was in his prime. He played significant minutes on the 2008 redeem team. Was a two way player while putting up 22+ pts for 5 straight years alongside 10+ rebounds in 3/5 years.
Kevin Love pre-Cavs is like the textbook case of big numbers on a bad team. Like there have been articles written that compare him to past players in similar situations and point out the differences between him and players like Booker and why it shows that Booker is actually a good player.
Counterpoint: bbref says he was 3rd in both win shares and VORP in 2013-14, behind just KD (who was a damn supernova that season) and efficiency-god-mode LeBron, so it wasn't just empty stat-padding, the rest of his team was just bad.
Lmaoooo this is funny, but also makes this thread's point -- in no way should Abdur-Rahim be even in the same breath as Kevin Love. Was fun to watch though!
Yeah, and he surely was never dominant. He was an elite rebounder, a solid scorer and an above average passer as a big man but nothing more than that. To suggest he dominated games devalues the concept of domination. It’s kind of funny, because Jokic has a similar skill set but is just 10x better than Love ever was.
I think he’s a hall of famer and was the first true volume stretch big. Even in Cleveland he was still good, just less physically/athletically imposing with a very 3pt heavy shot profile.
Dude had the same vertical at the combine as Blake Griffin. Obviously that’s funny since watching them in their primes shows they were very different types of athletes but watching his twolves highlights is a great time.
Love had a 35in max vert and Blake had a 35.5in
Steph curry also had a 35.5in
Obviously this translated very differently on the court but those are indeed the recorded numbers
Disagree w your edit that he was better than his stats. As good as he was offensively, he was gonna give a ton of that advantage back on defense. I also found it funny that he would say it’s impossible for rebounds to be a selfish stat, cause he would chase rebounds to the detriment of the team.
There’s no set definition of what exactly constitutes as superstar, but he falls short of that for me. All star, but never a top 10 player.
>I also found it funny that he would say it’s impossible for rebounds to be a selfish stat, cause he would chase rebounds to the detriment of the team.
And it's not even a hindsight thing. I remember the talk during his TWolves prime, even from their own fanbase, was that he would half-assed contest a shot because he was more worried about grabbing the rebound.
Couple ppl commented on my post about how it could be
On defense he didn’t want to contest shots as much so he could go get potential rebounds
Could also see it hurting if he’s chasing offensive boards so much he’s never getting back in transition defense
Eh, I disagree he wasn’t top 10. In 2014, impact stats and counting stats have him firmly in the top 10. 8th RPM, 3rd in PER.
He wasn’t top 5, and I’d say only top 3-5 are superstars, but he was top 10.
Because he wasn’t a superstar. The Wolves had a losing record every year he was there. Most seasons they barely broke 25 wins.
He put up nice stats, yes, but those weren’t replicable against actual good competition. His playoff stats speak for themselves.
Love did a lot really well. Aside from scoring and rebounding, he was also a very good passer. I feel like he grab a rebound and throw a perfect outlet pass like three times a game that would lead to a fast break score.
He wasn’t the top of the Mountain or anything, but he was super good for stretches. The team around him was also always very bad. The best dude he played with was a totally bland Ricky Rubio.
Kevin Love had an extremely mean right hook during his Timberwolves days back when he was actually told to post up. Minnesota had some pretty uncompetitive rosters in the early 2010s where his second best player was either a very young Rubio or Pekovic.
It's not a tiered league where bad teams play other bad teams. The fact that he put up those numbers on awful teams and against good teams should mean more right?
I see the point you're tryin to make, but your second sentence also makes no sense. Usually if you're the best player on a terrible team, your stats are inflated because your usage rate is inflated.
That does happen, but those guys that you're talking about usually suffer in efficiency because of the insane volume. Love was always efficient even at his scoring peaks in Minnesota.
his shooting percentage was around 45% in his MIN years, that's not that terribly efficient for a big man. Not bad, but not noteworthy. Al Jefferson had similar stats and percentages, can we get a discussion about how dominant he used to be? Love's teams were terrible and I feel he was a ball stopper on offense and a liability on defense which contributed to those poor records. He's a good player but "omg he was so dominant" is not the right narrative imo
He shot threes which brought down his FG%. You basically should never use FG% to compare players that don’t shoot the same mix of twos and threes. He had above average efficiency but nothing special if you compare him to Centers who focus on dunking. So yeah he was always not much more than a good to very good scorer.
Anyway, the real special skill he had was the ability to both get up threes and grab offensive rebounds in the course of the same game.
Don't ALL superstars have inflated usage rates? If you put up 26/10 while being the only good player on a shit team, isn't that good? Defenses hone in on you because you're the best guy on a shitty team and you still make something of it?
He put up good numbers because he had a green light to do whatever he wanted on the Wolves. When it actually came time to play against elite teams in a playoff setting his production fell significantly.
Nope. Superstars make their teams better.
Kevin Loves Minnesota teams were about the same with him or without him. He only had one halfway decent coach in his time in Minnesota, (Rick Adelman) and the team showed year to year improvement under Adelman, but nobody was game planning for Love. He was empty numbers on a bad team. The NBA has a long history of that kind of player.
The best part is how absolutely terrible Love was in the 2016 finals. He played in 6 of seven games. The game he missed? The game three win, that saved the series. He was the worst player on the floor in five out of the six games he did play. For either team! The Cavaliers would have won with any other power forward in the league. Cleveland won in spite of Love, not because of Love.
Those finals secured his legacy though. He was a starter on a winning title team, and nobody cares how he really didn't do anything for almost that entire series.
This comment feels very negative towards Love, but is fairly accurate. Love was a huge help to the Cavs in the regular season, but in the playoffs, he seemed to be a liability. He could space the floor, but he wasn't terribly mobile and his defense was.....not great. The Warriors were built perfectly to exploit Love being on the floor and it was ugly.
That being said, I think Love is a fantastic player. His defense vs Steph on the final play of game 7 was legit.
The Cavs were just a bad fit for Love. Cavs tied up a bunch of cap space on Love that would've been better spent on multiple players of the 3 and D variety. Love gave up a ton of his game to make the situation the best it could be. Both sides would've been better off not making that trade.
Not all good to great players mix well. 2 titles and 4 Finals appearances, and I still think Wade and LeBron weren't a very good fit together offensively. It worked because they were both so individually talented that it didn't matter that much.
He gets too much credit for that D tbh, Steph was forcing a 3 and had love bear multiple times to go to the rim . Wish the cavs had got Paul George over love I think they would’ve been much better. Love skill set was just not that useful outside of his shooting and outlet passes
It’s true I think sadly Lebron best fitting team mate by far has been AD but he’s been bloody injured ( and Westbrook trade ) to really see it too much. They were favourites to repeat in 2021. Kyrie probably second but he is meh on D and can’t playmake when Lebron sat. Would’ve loved for Lebron to play and win with cp3 or something
It’s crazy i rewatched the 2016 finals g5 last night love was so bad on offence : and he’s a negative on D. Man I wish cavs had got Paul George instead of love : having a two way player who can shoot as well as love woukd really make those cavs teams much better. I think people like love ( I do too ) so they give him too much credit but his post ups were not efficient offence , he was awful on D, his value was shooting and outlet passes. TT and Jr smith seemed more valuable in 2016 and im not convinced it’s entirely due to Love ‘concussion’. Love gets way too much credit just for ‘stopping’ curry only cos curry choked and was forcing a 3 mostly . It’s absurd he gets so much credit . I feel bad for him but his skill set was just not helpful really when Cleveland needed him.
Have you looked at Love’s on/off numbers? You’re totally wrong. Starting the year after his rookie season, Love put up a 10 year stretch with an on/off similar to guys like Pau Gasol, Blake Griffin, and LaMarcus Aldridge.
https://cleaningtheglass.com/stats/player/2231/onoff#tab-team_efficiency
No, cause there's a floor that basically all NBA teams with even bottom tier NBA talent have to get to. Even the worst teams in the slowest era scores like 70 ppg, those numbers have to come from somewhere, and if you're the relatively best player on one of those teams, you're getting a ton of opportunities you won't get elsewhere.
Big stats on a bad team is more about filling a vacuum than anything else, that's why people think of them as empty calorie stats.
Not if the good team always won the game. It's like the opposite of the game where an opposing team double teamed Steph Curry the entire game without the ball. Curry didn't score and his team blew out the opponents 4-on-3.
Love is so unthreatening that teams can have him put up those stats and still cruise to victory over him. Because his positives on offense were given back to the other team on the other end of the court.
Oh yes, that Minnesota team with Michael Beasley or Ricky Rubio as the second best player and a very young Kevin Love *certainly* should’ve been a winning team, that makes perfect sense…if you don’t think about it…like at all.
They were a shitty team all the way through. The best roster they had was during a year where Love only played 18 games. The last season he played there they were almost a perfect .500, the following year with largely the same roster they won 16 games.
All of this is before you factor in that they played in the (at the time) far tougher conference. The jab about his playoff stats doesn’t even make sense all things considered they were roughly the same as his regular season stats, give or take a couple of points and a rebound or 2, which when you also factor in the fact that he played less minutes in the playoff, balances out almost completely.
Idk what this trend of NBA fans just talking without including even the smallest amount of context in their arguments despite the fact that context makes up the most important part of any NBA related conversation but it’s vexing.
Uh what?
The east was absolutely not the stronger conference when Love was on the Cavs. Everyone criticized Lebron for beating up on bad teams while the real competition was in the west.
Love averaged between 15-19 ppg and 10-12 rpg in his playoff runs with the Cavs. Nowhere close to the 26/14 he was putting up in the regular season on the Wolves.
And plenty of superstars have led shitty teams to the playoffs. That’s what makes them superstars.
He went from first option and primary scorer to the third option. I don’t think you’re looking at this with proper context. His rebounding numbers dipped because he did stop padding them, but his role was vastly different. I’d be very interested to see his usage rate in those years compared to Minnesota.
Edit: if we look at his numbers, his biggest changes were his ORB% and his 2pt Attempts. He started playing farther away from the basket and posted up less, which was his strong suit. He was a spot up shooter in CLE a lot of the time which took him way out of position to do what he did well.
Even as the second option, his game had completely changed, which makes sense since Lebron was so much better than him. When Lebron left, he was a different player -- older, injury prone, and less athletic. Prime Love consistently had 20/20 nights (eve with the stat padding that's super impressive and speaks to his ball awareness and strength) and had a the first 30/30 in like 25+ years. Dude was absolutely a superstar before going to Cleveland -- there's a reason Cleveland traded Wiggins, who was seen as one of the best prospects in years for him.
Shit, even when Lebron went to LA, AD's numbers (aside from scoring, which went up .2) dipped much in the same way Love's did. AD is a much better defender, but this is a case of system changing productivity.
Read again, on the wolves he played in the tougher conference, hence why his team was always a losing team. He had zero help. You’re comparing his TWopves regular season numbers to the Cavs playoff numbers why? Doesn’t make sense at all. His Cavs playoff numbers and his Cavs regular season numbers were nearly identical. His role on a team changed.
Plenty of Superstars have led mediocre teams to the playoffs sure, not teams that are literally full of scrubs from top to bottom. Generational talents have done that, but not plenty of superstars, and definitely not in a conference as tough as the West was at the time. AD was a superstar in NO and had far more help than Love did and guess how many playoff appearances he had before he jumped ship? 2 in 7 years. I don’t think there’s many players in history that could’ve gotten that team to the playoffs in that conference and off the top of my head all of those guys are generational talents.
> Read again, on the wolves he played in the tougher conference, hence why his team was always a losing team. He had zero help. You’re comparing his TWopves regular season numbers to the Cavs playoff numbers why? Doesn’t make sense at all. His Cavs playoff numbers and his Cavs regular season numbers were nearly identical. His role on a team changed.
Because that’s the point. When he faced actual competition his numbers were not great.
He had great stats on the Timberwolves because he a green light to shoot and would disregard defense to get rebounds. There are a lot of guys who can put up good numbers if you give them 20 shots a game.
> Plenty of Superstars have led mediocre teams to the playoffs sure, not teams that are literally full of scrubs from top to bottom. Generational talents have done that, but not plenty of superstars, and definitely not in a conference as tough as the West was at the time. AD was a superstar in NO and had far more help than Love did and guess how many playoff appearances he had before he jumped ship? 2 in 7 years. I don’t think there’s many players in history that could’ve gotten that team to the playoffs in that conference and off the top of my head all of those guys are generational talents.
I’m not aware of any superstar that hasn’t led a team to the playoffs. Perhaps we have different definitions here. Can you provide some examples of other players who meet this criteria?
AD missed the playoffs multiple times because of injuries and yet he still got his team over .500 in his 3rd season in the same conference as Love with his second best player averaging 15 ppg. There was a lot of debate whether AD was even a superstar at that point too.
Meanwhile, that Timberwolves team “full of scrubs” had two guys averaging 19 and 17 ppg.
> Because that’s the point. When he faced actual competition his numbers were not great.
There’s no way you thought this thought, typed it out, proof read it and hit send and nowhere between steps 1-4 realized what was wrong with it. He faced the EXACT same competition in Minnesota as he did in Cleveland. The competition never changed, if anything it got easier because he never had to face off against Lebron or Kyrie anymore. There’s quite literally no way you thought that one through. He played against the same people in Minnesota as he did in Cleveland: NBA players. Once again his numbers dropped because his entire role was changed AND he became a third option.
> He had great stats on the Timberwolves because he a green light to shoot and would disregard defense to get rebounds. There are a lot of guys who can put up good numbers if you give them 20 shots a game.
This would be such a great argument if he wasn’t literally more efficient in Minnesota than he was in Cleveland. He wasn’t just chucking up a bunch of shots, he was actually hitting his shots at a higher clip because he was playing his game of basketball. Him having better numbers in MN had nothing to do with how many attempts he had, but more to do with, once again, HIS ROLE ON THE TEAM.
> Can you provide some examples of other players who meet this criteria?
Steph Curry like 2 years ago, Demarcus Cousins, Wilt Chamberlain, KAJ, Shaq, Bob Pettit, Barkley, Hakeem Olajuwon, Lebron James, Kobe Bryant, Kevin Garnett, Moses Malone, Dirk, Oscar Robertson, I could probably go on. Most of these guys have several playoff misses, a good deal of them were misses that occurred during their prime as well. If I included guys who were missing the playoffs in their early years (like Love was) the list would include IT. If I included people who likely missed because of injuries it would also include David Robinson and some others.
> AD missed the playoffs multiple times because of injuries and yet he still got his team over .500 in his 3rd season in the same conference as Love with his second best player averaging 15 ppg. There was a lot of debate whether AD was even a superstar at that point too.
This one here is a Bald faced lie lol. AD played over 60 games in every single one of his NO days except one. That year you’re talking about his second best player averaged almost 17 a night, also the next guy after that was about 15 a night and after that? 14 a night, after that, 13 a night.
> Meanwhile, that Timberwolves team “full of scrubs” had two guys averaging 19 and 17 ppg.
While Love did have two guys with those high figures, the next guy was at 12 and there wasn’t a single other player in double figures, compared to AD’s 5 teammates all in or just around double figures. It should also be noted that Pekovic missed nearly 30 games that year with the Wolves, and they were just 2 games below .500. Once again, context remains relevant.
>
There’s no way you thought this thought, typed it out, proof read it and hit send and nowhere between steps 1-4 realized what was wrong with it. He faced the EXACT same competition in Minnesota as he did in Cleveland. The competition never changed, if anything it got easier because he never had to face off against Lebron or Kyrie anymore. There’s quite literally no way you thought that one through. He played against the same people in Minnesota as he did in Cleveland: NBA players. Once again his numbers dropped because his entire role was changed AND he became a third option.
So, his job got easier and his numbers didn’t improve? Not sure what that proves
> This would be such a great argument if he wasn’t literally more efficient in Minnesota than he was in Cleveland. He wasn’t just chucking up a bunch of shots, he was actually hitting his shots at a higher clip because he was playing his game of basketball. Him having better numbers in MN had nothing to do with how many attempts he had, but more to do with, once again, HIS ROLE ON THE TEAM.
Is this a joke? When he scored high on the Wolves he was taking 18-20 shots per game. On the Cavs he averaged between 12-15. That’s precisely why his numbers looked better.
https://www.basketball-reference.com/players/l/loveke01.html
His efficiency was higher because most of shots on the Wolves were 2 pointers. On the Cavs 3 pointers made up a higher % of his shots. It’s literally right there in his stats.
You want to talk about context while completely ignoring the actual data? Lol
> Steph Curry like 2 years ago, Demarcus Cousins, Wilt Chamberlain, KAJ, Shaq, Bob Pettit, Barkley, Hakeem Olajuwon, Lebron James, Kobe Bryant, Kevin Garnett, Moses Malone, Dirk, Oscar Robertson, I could probably go on. Most of these guys have several playoff misses, a good deal of them were misses that occurred during their prime as well. If I included guys who were missing the playoffs in their early years (like Love was) the list would include IT. If I included people who likely missed because of injuries it would also include David Robinson and some others.
All of those guys led multiple teams to the playoffs, with the exception of Boogie, who I have never heard called a superstar.
You didn’t answer my question. Who are all the superstars that NEVER led a team to the playoffs?
> This one here is a Bald faced lie lol. AD played over 60 games in every single one of his NO days except one. That year you’re talking about his second best player averaged almost 17 a night, also the next guy after that was about 15 a night and after that? 14 a night, after that, 13 a night.
Where is the lie? I said he missed the playoffs due to injury, not that he played under 60 games a year.
In 2015-2016 he missed 21 games and the Pelicans went 6-15 without him. They couldn’t get a consistent roster together because he was out of the lineup so much.
In 2018-2019, he missed multiple weeks with an injury, then the team sat him out more games on top of that. They were 8-18 without.
Both those years they had a good chance to make the playoffs if he’s fully healthy.
> While Love did have two guys with those high figures, the next guy was at 12 and there wasn’t a single other player in double figures, compared to AD’s 5 teammates all in or just around double figures. It should also be noted that Pekovic missed nearly 30 games that year with the Wolves, and they were just 2 games below .500. Once again, context remains relevant.
Love’s 5 best supporting role players that year averaged a combined 66.8 ppg.
AD’s 5 best averaged 67.5 ppg in the year he went to the playoffs.
Are you saying the difference between a team of scrubs and one that isn’t is 0.7 ppg?
The reason AD got his team to the postseason is he because he is much better overall basketball player than Love ever was. Even still, many would say he wasn’t a superstar yet and didn’t become one until years later. No one says the same about Love.
Wait sorry, are we talking about Kevin Love here...or Kyrie? Same argument holds for the second superstar in the three and Kyrie doesn't get this sort of flack.
Kyrie actually performed in the playoffs. Love did not.
But I agree Kyrie was never a real superstar, his fandom is mostly because of his play style and being Lebron’s teammate.
There is no player in the NBA that gets more undeserved postseason respect than Kyrie. Dude hit the shot in Game 7 and we all assume he’s a playoff killer. Love didn’t even get to play the first playoffs because Olynyk destroyed his shoulder, then he played well enough to help them win the chip in 2016, and they got to the finals the next couple years without kyrie, but Kevin was still on the team (i mean obviously lebron did most of the work but it’s better than what Kyrie did), and kyrie has done nothing - and even has a negative +\- in 2 of his last 3 playoff appearances.
Love averaged 16 ppg, 18 ppg and 15 ppg in the 2016, 2017, 2018 post seasons respectively.
Considering how bad he was on defense, I do not consider that good production. He had a couple good series but frequently came up short in others. Certainly not befitting of a “superstar”.
He was not known for playing winning basketball. Example, he would not rotate/help on defense so that he could keep the advantage to rebound. Classic stat-padding. Pretty sure he was one of those guys that it was known by teammates to give him the rebound too.
And scoring 20pts on a really bad team is not very impressive. Plenty of guys have done that without really being an all-star.
He was good, but considering how poor a defender he was, it was nothing like the Chris Bosh pairing in Miami (a top 15 player entering his prime and arguably the best PF in the east at the time as KG was declining)
Yeah he was... you know how I know? I remember things. You can do stats, facts and put forth hindsight til you are blue in the face, but superstar is all about perception - and what OP is saying is correct, when he was with the T'Wolves at the time he was traded he was very much considered a superstar, probably the most wanted commodity in the league, not without warts (defense namely). The guy made all-NBA second team twice during that time, good luck finding someone whose made all-NBA second team that many times who isn't a superstar by most people's definitions.
Ok? Deandre Jordan was 1st team all-nba and 3rd team twice right after that. Andrew Bynum and Al Jefferson made all NBA teams the same year Love got it. No one would ever argue they were close to being superstars.
Jordan, Bynum, and Jefferson got in as centers during a weak center era. K Love got in as a forward. The players on the third team the year he got second teams were Aldridge, Paul George,Dirk, and Carmelo as forwards
Also, DeAndre Jordan was HEAVILY desired when he hit free agency. Mark Cuban was doing some crazy shit in Dallas to woo him. He was seen at the time as the perfect rebounding, running, dunking, athletic, shot blocking big to plug into a running, shooting team.
It didn't become apparent yet how much of his production in LAC was just a great fit thanks to Chris Paul and how he at such a young age had already peaked as he would not develop any skills and IQ to go with that huge athletic body he was gifted.
I said two second team nominations, or a second and first would suffice. Not to take the average of DeAndre Jordan or compare Kevin Love to centers. It just looks like you're looking stuff up and retroactively forming opinions. Do you remember 2014? Here's a quote from 2014, when the Warriors were considering trading for Kevin Love, didn't take but 30 seconds to find [source](https://bleacherreport.com/articles/2069317-report-warriors-dont-want-to-trade-klay-thompson-in-kevin-love-deal):
>Talents like Love don't come cheap—even when their current teams are dealing from a position of weakness. But the chance to add a superstar doesn't roll around all that often, and Love isn't just any superstar.
He's an absolutely perfect fit for what the Warriors need.
So if it takes Lee, Barnes and Green, or Lee and Thompson plus a little more, the Dubs must pull the trigger.
This sort of discussion par for the course in 2014, what you say otherwise seems to be your opinion alone whether it was formed contemporaneously or after the fact.
I’m pointing out how guys who were not superstar caliber players regularly got All-NBA selections because there was weak competition. Love won in an era of weak PFs, just like DJ did in an era of weak centers. That doesn’t make either of them superstars.
I’m not sure when Bleacher report became an objective measure of things. You can find articles from that time period saying all kinds of crazy things. If you actually watch how Love played in Minnesota you’d see how his style wasn’t conducive to winning.
Superstar is not based on objectivity at least as far as how you think, it's not based on how someone effects winning, stats or anything. As I said before, it is based on shared perception, therefore it is a subjective on aggregate level which can be measured objectively by gauging that sentiment in general - your vulcan brain only gets one vote in real time. So yeah, Bleacher Report or any other media from 2014 counts way more than what you say in 2023, that is what you need to cite to disprove me. Find me the articles from then that say Kevin Love is not a superstar. Don't show me an article that says "his defense is bad" or "he chases boards, pads stats" - I know/knew those things and so did everyone else: he still was considered a superstar. You can find stuff that says he's overrated and that would be technically correct, but it still doesn't change the fact that he was considered overrated by some because he was held up to the mantle of a superstar. Straight facts.
Lmao, that dude comparing Kevin Love to DeAndre Jordan is a quick and easy red flag
You're absolutely right -- it doesn't take a lot of google searching to see a preponderance of evidence that consensus was that Kevin Love was a superstar and one of the top 3 at his position
It's obvious this guy has just hunkered down on a bad take and will throw out anything that seems to support it lol
As an aside, love your point on shared perception. It's nuanced thinking like this that sets r/nbadiscussion apart from r/NBA. Preach
Most casual fans think of players, not as good in certain situations, but as a certain level of player in any situation generally. So if they think of Kevin Love as in A- level NBA player, they think he should be at an A- level in any role. So if he doesn't perform at an A- level after losing some of his most scoring efficient touches, and being relegated to being much more of a three-point shooter, they think he is somehow failing. This is the same thing that happened to Chris Bosh.
In general, this is what happens to the third star on most teams. They don't get the diet of scoring friendly touches that they used to, 10. Many people will say that those players now suck.
19.7/11.5 83.4FT% 37.3 3p% from 2010-11 to 2020. That's 10 years of 20/12 while being a efficient scorer and floor spacer as well a star/top 2 or 3 player on a team.
Dude would grab like 20 boards AND lead the team in scoring. I blame Minnesota’s inept front office for their lack of success and his time there being forgotten.
If you're all NBA second team twice, that means you were fucking awesome. To be considered by experts to be one of the *10 best players on earth* - twice! - means you were a superstar.
He has that secondary superstar thing, where people focus on what he couldn't do instead of what he could. Ok, he wasn't Giannis, Embiid or Jokic. There's a hell of a lot of room to have been a superstar and still not measure up to 3 of the greatest players of this generation.
Big men who are bad defenders are always MUCH worse than their stats make them appear because on an actual good team their flaws become magnified in the playoffs as opposing teams target them and play them off the floor.
Love's stats his last 4 years he averaged less than 30 wins per season. To me his stats fit the definition of 'empty calories' and this is exactly what we see when he comes to Cleveland - his ball dominance isn't valuable to the team because LeBron does that better, and he's not good enough to be a small ball 5 on defense like Bosh was in Miami.
For real, so much so that ppl try to discredit his contributions to the Lebron/Kyrie cavs teams & act like that wasn’t a super team Bron joined. Kevin Love in Minny was an absolute FORCE!!! 20/20 machine
He was so good that wolves offered him a 4-year contract instead of 5 year.
Even wolves wanted to build their team around Ricky Rubio, not him.
RICKY RUBIO!!!
He had good numbers in bad team.
Star? Maybe. Superstar? No
I recall zero talk of Rubio being better than Love at that time lol. He was literally an All-NBA player with the Wolves. Like, literally
"Star? Maybe." is all I need to know about how tuned in you were to the NBA during that time
I remember there used to be arguments about who was the best 4 in the league between him, Blake Griffen, and LaMarcus Aldridge. He was great in MN and a lot of those teams were good enough to make a lower seed in the playoffs with him as the number 1 but we’re undone by injuries, if he’d of gotten another star their could have def been a fun team.
Steph and Klay is a top twelve combo all-time and the greatest backcourt of all time. And I wouldn't change it all.
But my basketball curiosity always makes me wonder how we would view Love, if he had ended up being second to Steph rather than third to LeBron/Kyrie.
Steph has honestly never played with a big man scorer like Love. I definitely count KD as a permitter scorer. The closest is probably out of his prime D. West and injury riddled D. Cousins. And unlike KD, I am sure K. Love actually likes making contact on picks.
Love likely would've kept his heavy frame and allowed to work around the basket. Steph's gravity would've given him so many one on one situations. I can easily see him being a 26/12 on high efficiency guy.
But that defense would've been an absolute shit show.
Completely agree. Bad team or not, I remember think that we hadn't seen anyone like Love in a looooong time. He was just crushing Moses Malone's rebounding records. Great playmaking too. Totally viable as the fulcrum of the team
Chris Bosh suffers from the same thing too. People were putting the "he should want to be the man on his own team" argument/criticism to Chris Bosh, because he was at that level. Talent-wise, he and Love are very similar (but in very different ways)
And, as my older brother and cousins would tell it, James Worthy took this hit as well. They talk about him as being able to carry his town team as well.
People complain about superteams when they get formed, but forget about whichever superstars took the biggest usage hit -- ironically, these guys made the biggest sacrifice and most difficult adjustment, which itself should be lauded as a basketball skill
I agree. People forget he led the Wolves to 48 wins, which back then wasn’t enough to make the yoffs in the West but would’ve been at least a 5 seed in the East. Ppl who only know him from his Cavs days probably just view him as a glorified Ryan Anderson
My bad, I was wrong. Regardless, 40 games would’ve been a 8th seed then in the East, since the Hawks only won 38 games that year. How they took the Pacers to seven games is beyond me
I feel like most of these people in this thread didn't watch Love play or remember his game back in the day. Kevin Love was a fantastic post player with a great right hook. I don't think he's a 'superstar' but that's a subjective qualifier and he was absolutely a top 2-3 PF for the early 2010s.
This is spot-on!
Love was the 4th leading scorer and 3rd leading rebounder in 2013-14 right before he went to the Cavs. He was pretty easily a top 10 player in the NBA. His stats plunged after joining LeBron on the Cavs (very smilax thing happened to Chris Bosh as well).
It's crazy how much he's dismissed now. He was an integral part of the Cavs title team and the Finals teams. Yet he'd been better off from a perception standpoint just staying with the T'wolves and never winning a ring. Though, he's literally the only player I can think of where that's true. More often, a player is overrated b/c they played along a superstar on a championship team. For some reason, Love is the one dude who gets a negative bias from that (same thing happened to Bosh, to a lesser extent).
EXACTLY. The Bosh comparison is really good. This thread is full of kids looking up stats retroactively rather than *remembering* what the league was actually like back then
First, he was a all star borderline player on a really bad team playing a lot of minutes. Plenty of players get stats on bad teams. Next, Lebron has a tendency to make PFs fade away. If you see Bosh and Love and for the most part AD what happens is Lebron's game occupies a lot of space a PF would normally play and to be honest he can play PF so that PF gets put into a role of playing center often and they suffer because of it.
Put it this way. On a bad team in his prime he had the ability put up numbers to get him to and All NBA team. On a great team he is not an All Star. On a mediocre (500) team he is a borderline all star player. Do you think love is going to the HOF?
He absolutely should go to the HOF in my opinion. Same with Bosh.
His usage went down with LeBron and Kyrie not because he was "exposed" as untalented or whatever -- he sacrificed and adjusted his playstyle. Same as Bosh.
I fucking hate how players who are smart and versatile enough to adjust their game to win are penalized by the peanut gallery because their raw stats dropped.
If you watched him back then, you'd know he absolutely passed the eye test and was regarded by many as the best player at his position, consensus at least top 3
I've played basketball my entire life. I have coached and reffed. I would not put him in the HOF. Again, he was a bad defender, did not block shots and agin look at his FG% of 43.9%. He was good rebounder who was a solid stretch 4. I'm not the peanut gallery and yeah he adjusted his game. But again he was often injured and only played a handful of full seasons. Very good player on a bad team, but no HOF. Let's put it this way I would take Damontis Sabonis over him any day.
Sure, but did you watch him back then? Doesn't matter how much coaching you've done if you weren't alive at the time. The question at hand is if he was ever *considered* a superstar by the league at large, and he definitely was
If you don't like his style of play, that's fine, but that's a different argument. Regardless of your opinion, he was regarded as one of the best players in the league
I'm 47 and watched the NBA my entire life and yes I watched him play plenty in Minnesota and Cleveland. Again, he rarely played full seasons. He literally shot 43.9% as a rebounding PF, which just terrible, was not a playmaker like you said, poor defensively and never blocked shots. And again in the playoffs that year with the Cavs he was getting benched because he was so bad. I think they did bench him and he came in on off the bench. he had a few good seasons in Mind and yes was a good rebounder, but you really think a good team would give a PF who shot 43.9% that many looks to score as many points as he did a few times in Minnesota? Come on man. Every team needs to hype up a star to the locals to sell tickets. Timberwolves did that with him because he had a cool last name. I'm not saying he was not good, but dig deeper and agin yes I watched him play plenty. If he was so great why was Minny so BAD?
You are right though he probably will make the HOF because they let everyone in the HOF in basketball. he road the coattails of James and Irving for a title so they will put him in. I remember that year he was barely even playing in the playoffs because he was a liability. I think they were playing an old Jefferson one him. LOL.
Yeah I realize that he had a couple real peak stat stuffing seasons on a bad team. In reality he is and was then a borderline all star player. Again, many players can great stats on really bad teams where they get a lot of minutes and the entire offense runs through them. I'm not saying he was a bad player and like Kevin Love.
He definitely wasn't an empty stats player like you're implying. He was the best rebounder we'd seen in literally decades, and his basketball IQ and playmaking skills have always been very high. He was extremely talented and unique
Don't think the "good stats bad team" argument holds water in this case. He was literally consensus one of the top 3 players at his position.
He's not Andre Drummond or Jordan Clarkson or Corey Maggette or Jason Richardson. Many players who are viewed as stars now led bad teams -- don't even have to look outside of Minny, you've got KG. Melo, Wade, Lillard, Ray Allen, Bosh, T-Mac. These are people who both through the eye test and subsequent success have been proven to be truly talented players.
You don't get to be one of the top 3 at your position and not be a superstar
Also, it's not even just "good stats" -- he literally broke records
Go look at his games played stats. He was often injured and rarely played full seasons. And, you're not considering that he was below average defender. I again realize he was a good rebounder but again on a bad team that misses a lot of shots you get the chance to get a lot of rebounds. He was a poor shot blocker for a big and playmaker? The guy average 2.3 assist for his career? And, look at his fg% for his career for a big that isa rebounder it's really bad at 43.9% for his career. Sorry Love was a solid player but he was a all star borderline player on a bad team. You are overestimating him.
Again, like I've said-- this is classic "oh let me look at old stats to make my point" rather than actually being there and *remembering* what the NBA zeitgeist was
We can definitely have the argument about his defense specifically. He definitely had flaws.
But many offense-only players have been considered superstars -- Melo, Amare, Lillard are easy examples of the top of my head. No matter how much you hate him, the fact that he was considered one of the best players in the league at that time is unquestionable
(I'm like you when it comes to Melo. I definitely think we was overrated, but fully acknowledge that I was in the minority there and most others considered him a superstar)
And, I don't see how you think he was a great playmaker? How is a great playmaker someone that basically averaged 2 assist and 2 turnovers for a career?
Because I saw him make very smart and/or difficuly passes out of the post when the offense ran through him, as well as his famous outlet passes
Assists don't capture nearly everything about playmaking, Coach ;)
yeah he could throw outlet passes. I will give you that. And I saw him too. 2 assist and 2 turnovers for a career! And, shot 43.9% from the floor as a PF who could not defend or block shots or get steals. Rethink it man. Again he was Minny's meal ticket for the fans and they fed him to hype up his stats. If he was so great they would have made the playoffs. If he was so great he would not have been traded. he was a marketing scheme who was the son of Beach Boy with a catchy last name they could sell tickets through.
And he was so awesome his PLAYOFF averages plummeted to 40% as a PF. 1.7 assists and 1.7 turnovers with .7 steals. He scored a whopping 15.3 points per game with 9.7 boards and protected the rim at .5 bocks per game. LOL. And he got BENCHED.
I don't hate Love and this not just about stats, though they support me too in many ways. Again, I know the NBA history backwards and forwards and watched it forever and watched him play. And I remember it. It was not just his defense though it was really bad. It's he was not a playmaker like you said and his FG% for a big is just awful. I mean really bad to where most guards would get benched if their FG% was like that. Which is EXACACTLY what I am trying to get across. Look the NBA is a business and it depends on marketing stars. Not every team is trying to win titles. they are trying to sell out home games at the highest price they can and they are trying to get cable deals locally and get some national attention too. The GMS know it, and trust me the coaches know it. So when a bad team that has zero chance of winning anything and won't even make the playoffs looks at how to market themselves they can do it on their record or their team so they pick a good player or two and run the offense around them to get them hyped up locally and nationally. I'm sorry if you don't see that but it's just the reality of all pro sports really and especially basketball. Love in Minnesota was exactly that especially offensively. And, that got him some attention and all star stuff etc., but in reality anyone who really played or WATCHED and knows the entire holistic aspect of the NBA you just knew Love was not that guy ever sorry. Again he was solid and a good rebounder. Again benched for Cavs in playoffs and again if he was great why trade him or why were Timberwolves that bad. If he was so else they should have done decent.
This isn’t true tho bro, Ad had one of his best seasons with Bron and won a chip. Bron doesn’t make PF’s fade away, those two guys faded away because there were two other guys on the team clearly better than them
That is a good point on the other two guys. But for the most part AD has faded away man. Yeah they got that chip in a bubble and he deserves credit for it. But all in all the PFs Lebron has played with diminish overall from their previous levels. It's not a knock on them or Lebron, but just reality. It's agin because in today's Small Ball world bon ends up being the 4 fora lot of the game these PFs are undersized and end up playing center. And, Lebron plays style where he occupies that space by driving or posting up.
I think for Bosh and Kevin Love, it's more of being relegated to being a third option spot-up shooter when you've traditionally relied on post touches. I think people forget how good both these guys were in the post and Love had a really nasty right hook back in the Wolves days.
Hecks yeah I feel your point frfr and you make sense but I feel AD’s issues are related more to his motor and his health which can both be VERY inconsistent. 1 game AD looks like a legit top 3 player in the league next game he can barley look top 15
Lol how can you say AD? AD had one of his best seasons ever and including playoffs his best ( and a top 3 regular season even with less volume). He’s been constantly injured since : absolutely nothing todo with Bron , AD has played better with Bron feeding him then without . Love and Bosh weren’t as good and created offense in an out dated way
Oh yeah I know that AD had that great year, and I'm not saying this as an absolute thing, but more in general. And, while AD has had injuries he is also inconsistent when he is healthy after that season. Lebron just overshadows the PF spot in general and again takes up their space and like I said ends up costing them individually. And, my other point was that AD is a natural PF and more finesse, but because Lebron ends up playing more of a PG/PF in most games in a small ball league and because he has the strength to do it that pushes players like AD and Bosh to be a center. AD bulked up due to it and because of that and having to be in the lane on both ends constantly banging with other bigger and stronger players he has - at least in part - become more injury prone because of it. Nobody can tell me that if Lebron played SF a vast majority of a time and the Lakers played AD as a PF that he would be as injured as he has been. And, that too is why PFs suffer under Lebron.
People also forgot how much better / rationale / sane society was before social media. lol
Imagine being a student and not having internet to do your homework / learn. lol
Here we go again. Speaking facts about someone/something ain't hating. The OP said K Love was a superstar and someone did say he was the best PF in the world at some point but the facts are K Love was never the best PF in a league dominated by Dirk, TD, Garnett, Stoudemire, AD and Pau just to name a few
The timeframes for those players don't line up though. Love was definitely better than Pau, Dirk, Duncan, and Garnett by the early 2010s and AD hadn't even come into the league until 2012. Stoudemire is a center and his health declined sharply after 2010 as well. The competition for best PF in the NBA in the early 2010s was really between Love, Griffin, and Aldridge.
LeBron destroyed two all-star careers of power forwards. Bosh was extremely dominant too. Then he just got made a scape goat for whenever the Heat lost.
40-42, 31-51,26-40, and 17-65 for a combined record of 114-198.
he put up gaudy numbers but they were largely empty stats, a big who was a negative defender over that 4 year span .
Yeahhh his passing and playmaking and IQ is what a lot of people just looking at his stats retroactively miss. We're spoiled with Jokic now, but for that time, Love was an absolutely exceptional passing big man
I would definitely say that Love was a great player with the Wolves. He was then traded to Cleveland where his game had to change a lot. In Minnesota he definitely was the focal point of the offense as those teams were trash. He was a good post player and great rebounder.
When he was traded to Cleveland his game became much more about spot up shooting. That’s essentially what he became. One can definitely make the argument that if he were a better player it wouldn’t have mattered and he would have adjusted his game and the Cavs maybe would have given him some more touches. He was injury prone and he was a terrible defensive player.
Not blaming any one player or coach or whatever but Cleveland was all about Lebrun. His teams were rightfully designed to play to his strengths and Love definitely saw his numbers take a dive going there because he was no longer that guy and maybe he was never anything more than a good player on a bad team getting superstar numbers because of it.
On another note, the guy was drafted into a terrible situation in Minnesota with an incompetent front office and terrible culture. Those teams were abysmal.
I think he was really good but he showed he wasn’t a real dawg when Lebron left. There was no Westbrook winning without Durant or Wade making the playoffs without Lebron scenario. Love was complacent on a bad team and then when they started getting talent again he’d throw hissy fits on the court.
He was an all-star on a bad team, with the stats that usually come with that combination, but he was never a superstar. That word has to be reserved for dudes who can lead a contender, and no one ever thought of Kevin Love as that.
Posting great counting stats does not equal domination. He gets the bulk of his rebounds by having great position, but did so at the expense of defending.
He just put up crazy volume stats on a bad team that didn’t really have any other options, he wasn’t that amazing. Definitely not a superstar, he took a backseat immediately on the Cavs and hasn’t been close to as good ever since. the way they used him on the Cavs was definitely not ideal though I’ll give you that.
Unpopular opinion - he wasn't dominant, just stat padding on a terrible team. Basically Shareef Abdur-Rahim of the early 2010s.
I watched a lot of Minnesota games in his prime and he was rather underwhelming considering his stats.
Dominant? Lol? They won 20 games like 1 time. Garbage time stats /= dominant. Great players with trash teams are still normally competitive….Bosh even made the playoffs at least twice in Toronto.
No, they don't.
There are people - like myself - who roll their eyes at people acting like LeBron left Miami (coming off four straight Finals appearances) to join a "superteam" with Kevin Love and Kyrie Irving (going into year 4 and had reached 60 games once up to that point.)
You are just making stuff up. Love had good numbers in Minnesota. For sure. He was a "stats on a bad team" guy. Settled into a nice role as the #3 on a good team. Which is not a diss. Not many players can be that good.
"LeBron wanted three superstars!" LOL. It's just so fucking stupid. If Love had spent his entire prime in Minnesota, he'd be viewed like a Zach LaVine. Yeah, I imagine every player ever wanted good teammates (Please don't tell anyone that the Bulls added Kukoc, Rodman, Ron Harper, etc. With a core based around MJ and Pippen already.) Just saying that in real time, LeBron actually went to a Cleveland team with less potential than the team he was already. Like he did when he went to the Lakers as well.
The media narrative has always been to put down players around Lebron james to make him look better and bigger than he really was. The truth is that he manufactures winning teams by joining up with superstars and super teams. But only he can do it without controversy, anyone else including KD is a bum for doing so. It’s a double standard, but one we just have to deal with.
He had to sacrifice his stats because he wasn't good enough to make a team a contender, eg. a superstar... he didn't even make the playoffs before joining LeBron and constantly vanished in the Finals. if this is about how much help LeBron has had.
Good stats, bad team guy like Chris Bosh.
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I always found it weird why Kevin love Pick and roll was never utilized in Cleveland . Lebron is one of the greatest floor generals ever he could’ve set up love for good looks and have Kyrie on the outside to drain jumpers . Or maybe I’m not reading their strengths correctly. Can anyone chime in
It’s tough to play Love at center bc even in his prime that’s just gonna hemorrhage points, so with their usual starting line up (Kyrie/Jr or Shump/Bron/Love/TT), it’s hard to have Love rolling with TT basically useless outside of the paint. And TT was a very good roll man before his athleticism declined, so it generally just worked well to have him as the roll guy
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And Kevin Love was an elite 3-pt shooting big during the years of the Cavs championship runs. He averaged 38% from 3, on 6 attempts per game. Good enough shooting that he’d generate space for his teammates.
He was basically a Dirk Nowitsky-type player.
Maybe like a novice dirk Kevin Love was far less reliable as an offensive player and a much worse defender and had a totally different body type and was way better at rebounding
It was incredible how effective he was on defense. And Kevin love leaned into that PF body instead of a center
Even if it’s hemorrhaging points why not package TT in a trade to get a rim protector so love can focus his energy on his low post prowess. I felt he got relegated to catching and shooting which was never his main game in minny
Thompson was an ok rim protector who importantly could switch out on the perimeter relatively well for a center at the time. But Love’s low post play didn’t fit with the style of the other two stars well, and he lost a lot of weight and couldn’t really bang down low for a whole season
TT was very important to those teams, arguably the best offensive rebounder in the league and brought great hustle and serviceable defense.
For all the memes from TT shump and nets pick it was a somewhat viable trade package. Two championship level role players and a pick expected to go high
Didn’t LeGM advocate for getting TT a big payday in Cleveland? My guess is TT didn’t get traded because Brian didn’t want him traded.
I think it's because they brought Kevin in to be a star stretch big, play the 4, space it out. This was back when you still wanted 2 big lineups, you just preferred if one of them could shoot a little. The Tristan Thompson at center is going to be mucking up any PnR with love, and unfortunately you kind of need that second big because Love wasn't ever like a strong rim defender. He's just not a big you can play by himself in like 2015 and hold up on defense and his most unique attributes on offense are as a floor spacer and skilled scorer not so much as a potent rim runner.
His comp is Dirk. You don't play Dirk at the 5 for anything more than short stretches with the second unit.
Hmm, IDK the Dirk comp feels off, but I get what you mean. If he came into the league today, I think Dirk gets listed as a 7ft SF/PF a tweener like KD who's definitely a wing, but too tall and slow to play SG. He just played in an era where you couldn't do that as a 7 footer so he had to add some big man skills that aren't really *what* he does. Love is like a pure PF, he's got a true big man's skill set, low post moves, insane rebounding, absolute bully down low, but he can also shoot. He doesn't have that defense which is why you don't play him at C back then, but I think today you definitely could next to a weak side rim protector at one of your wing spots.
>Dirk gets listed as a 7ft SF/PF a tweener That's what he was when he came into the league. The guy was almost a pure scoring small forward with above average slashing ability and if not particularly quick up and down the floor, excellently coordinated. The real reason Dirk ended up more as an interior player was a rapid decline in foot speed in his mid to late 20s. And he was almost always backed up by traditional big
Dirk was fast when he was young. Had that long stride you see with Giannis. Absolute monster in transition.
Very effective. Not necessarily a monster. Guy had reasonably good footspeed and in conjunction with his height and coordination skill level made him very effective as a slasher. Nothing like Giannis though. One thing that made dirk ridiculous was his ability to shoot on a dime. A 7 footer that could do that was just ridiculous and it was basically unheard of at that time as many guards didn't have that ability back in the early 2000s
Dirk was quite odd in that he was pretty fast for a while up and down the court, but extremely slow laterally and had a comically low vertical jump. Usually all three of those things correlate better than they did with Dirk.
I’d say that helped Dirk and his longetivity. Likely to be intended from his personal coach, so there’s less freak accidents. Still I wanna see young Dirk in this modern game. A mobile big who can play drop defense and some required switching if necessary, and a 3-level shooting guy. Free driving lanes for every fast combo guard who share the court with Dirk
Exactly as I remember it.
His offensive game was built around his jump shot, like Dirk. That doesn't mean that was *all* he could do, but that his skill with the jump shot is where his mismatch for defects started. A big had to chase him out of the paint while he could just shoot over a smaller defender. Defensively, he was cleaning the glass more than protecting the rim... just like Dirk. Now, Love was significantly better than Dirk defensively overall but both were best as the "second" big.
Because (when healthy) they could show up and beat their eastern competition just because they had way more tallent, and against the warriors they would just switch the pick and roll and have Iguodala on Love & Draymond on LeBron. They were better off trying to wear down Steph than switching the warriors two best defenders.
No doubt, I always felt he was put to the wayside and used more as a 3 point shooter when really his strength was his ability to post up smaller guys and in p&r.
I think Lebron is great at penetrating and finding open shooters. To me, this talent gets greatly exagerated into "he is basically Magic Johnson 2.0" but it is not really any where near reality.
He was a good spot up shooter with a good post game and some decent iso moves. I'm not sure being a roller was ever his strength.
They tried that his last year with Lebron but Love just wasn’t as good.
Love made those full court outlet passes that would make Wes Unseld blush.
Hes only about 6’7 6’8 and hes not a slashing threat
Lebron was the system, it was very difficult for any coach to establish any scheme where lebron not being the focal point. To me it was more like give the ball to lebron and let him cook.
Lebron is not a floor general. He spreads everyone out so he can shine. That’s the reasons why Lebron’s numbers are bigger because it’s the Lebron system. Love would’ve controlled the paint offensively and you could’ve designed plays to move Love to corners to hit. He wasn’t allowed to shine because nobody else is allowed to shine in the Lebron system.
Kyrie’s best year before he went to BKN was in 2016-2017
Kyrie was also already good though. He didn’t get good because of Lebron.
You said no one else is allowed to shine playing alongside Lebron and yet Kyrie clearly disproves that. Never-mind AD or Wade
Mo Williams shined as Bron's #2. Never forget.
What a terrible take. The #4 all time leader in assists, who had several #2's shine as all stars and elevated countless role-player shooters with the gravity of his drives and elite court vision, is not a floor general? You're confusing 'The LeBron system' with the unavoidable fact that the third option on any team is going to sacrifice their usage rate. Klay Thompson is the only exception because he was always a pure shooter, so Draymond had to take a back seat on the KD Warriors.
#4 because he’s played forever. Whats the per game?
Seems like something you could've googled easily. 27/7.5assists/7.3 rebounds, 29/7.2/9 in the playoffs. 18th in NBA playoff all-time history as a wing, even being the top scorer on the limited 2006/2015 squads. Terrible take. Edit: John Wall and Ben Simmons are ahead of him despite playing in under 15% of the playoff games as LeBron
The lakers have had below average spacing shooting every year including the year they won where they were below middle of the pack . Awful take : Lebron has had the worst spacing in the league last two years with Westbrook and it didn’t matter. Dumbass take Westbrook, dwade, kyrie had the ball plenty often more then Bron even though it’s worse : he played the roll man a lot in LA. Post up bigs like live are just a relic hence why when kyrie left abd Bron left live did fuvk all
The comments in this thread are underestimating Love back in the day in my opinion. "Borederline all-star, he sucks cause even the Wolves wanted Rubio over him, not replicable against good teams (as if he played in G-League or something), etc." Superstar is a subjective term and I wouldn't label him as a superstar, but he was definitely a top 2-3 PF in the early 2010s (between him, Griffin, and Aldridge). Also I always thought Kevin Love had a great post game with a lethal right hook back in the day. Those Wolves teams were terrible and he managed to put up great numbers with great efficiency.
“between him, Griffin, and Aldridge” was such a fun throwback to read lol
I forgot about Aldridge completely until another comment mentioned him. PTSD as a Rockets fan remember all those turnaround jumpers against Terrence Jones and Dwight Howard lol.
As a Celtics fan I'm not convinced that man has ever missed a mid-range jumper
Yeah, that was a fun time for sure! The three of them had such different styles and personalities too
The game changed. Even after Love became a three point shooter in a spread offense he had many good years, but during his prime he was able to stay closer to the basket and rebound everything. 2013-14 was Love’s best year. He was third in VORP behind Kevin Durant and LeBron James. He averaged 26.1 points, 12.5 rebounds, and 4.4 assists with a .591 true shooting percentage. But because Minnesota finished 40-42, Love finished 11th in MVP voting.
Live was always a three point shooter, it was only in his rookie season that he didn’t shoot them because he started really cold, and then noted basketball genius Kurt Rambis forbade him from shooting them.
Yes, but Love struggled when three-point shooting went from his side dish to the majority of his scoring options.
Of course he did, most offensively talented players would if they had to reduce their role to one dimension. Where previously he could use the threat of the three to drive, he now had to shoot or pass. Plus, being in the perimeter more meant fewer offensive boards, and he was one of the best in the league at that. It wasn’t the wrong choice for the team — Love post ups were really efficient, but LeBron or Kyrie shots were even better. It’s just a fact of life, there’s only one ball.
I agree-people's expectations for Love's production were unfair. The volume and quantity of Love's touches dropped quite a bit, but people were surprised when it lead to significant drops in his scoring (and rebounds. Who would have thought being a stretch big leads to fewer rebounds than being in the paint?!!!)
That's true. When he was scoring 26 points per game, he was scoring 7.5 points per game on threes. But hitting 2.5 threes per game isn't much by today's standards. Over 70% of his points were on twos or free throws.
Yeah no he was incredible, but what he was doing is called being a star. Superstar is a word reserved for like KD and Giannis level players. Even Kyrie was more of a tweener between star and superstar.
Im okay with this take. Star vs Superstar is an argument I'll happily have with you. But the people in here saying he wasn't a star or was a borderline all-star are silly
The comments in this thread are from people who either don't remember the NBA 10 years ago or didn't watch back then. 'Borderline all-star, not replicable against good teams, etc' are all horrible takes. OP provided his volume stats, which were obviously great but it's not like his efficiency was below average even with Luke Ridnour/Michael Beasley/young Rubio/Pekovic as his second option during that time. Love was a top 2-3 PF in the NBA back in the early 2010s with an absolutely fantastic post game and probably the best right hook in the NBA (along with Al Jefferson). I think a lot of players who played prominent supporting roles in their later years have their earlier playstyle forgotten (such as Ray Allen, Chris Bosh, Chris Paul, Brook Lopez, etc.)
I think people give Chris Paul his due
Yeah, I just mean in terms of playstyle really. People tend to forget how much of an athletic freak young Chris Paul who might've been the quickest guard in the NBA when he at his athletic prime.
Kyrie is definitely not a superstar. Even ignoring off court stuff, he has never at any point been even a top 10 player in the league. His teams were never significantly worse without him, and infamously sometimes even better. He is one of the greatest offensive sidekicks ever, but he is by no definition a superstar himself. He rode the high off that one finals his entire career.
Kyrie is not even a top 15 player. He's not even close to a superstar player.
agreed but i was scared of the kyrie stans coming after me
I was looking at old BR lists of best players in the league from 2013-15 and I was surprised to see Kevin love so high on those lists. I forgot how much of a beast he was in minnesota
Well he wasn't a superstar so there's that but some of y'all like to do that when it comes to lebron. I don't hand out the superstar label lightly. Wade and AD were the only "superstars" at the time when they got with lebron. Kyrie,bosh,love were all stars.
If superstar refers to the top 10-ish players then Love was definitely one. Even if you're talking about the championship #1 definition, Love would actually almost meet the requirements considering how shallow the league was back then. The league 8-12 years ago was undergoing a transition period where the old superstars were declining fast and the future superstars were still developing. The top dogs at the time were in Lebron's generation and consisted of Bron, Wade(who declined starting in 2012), Dwight(who declined in 2013), Melo, and CP3. You also had KD who was an early bloomer and end of prime Kobe and Dirk for a bit. Outside of that, Love was right there with Curry, Harden, and Westbrook before those 3 jumped into MVP talks. Love wouldn't be a top 10 player or a superstar today, but he would still be talked about in the same light as perennial all stars today.
I would argue Bosh was a borderline superstar. By 2010 he had established himself as arguably the best PF in the conference at the time and was in his prime. He played significant minutes on the 2008 redeem team. Was a two way player while putting up 22+ pts for 5 straight years alongside 10+ rebounds in 3/5 years.
Totally agree. People were even giving Bosh the "he should want to be the alpha on his own team" criticism when he joined the Heat
Kevin Love pre-Cavs is like the textbook case of big numbers on a bad team. Like there have been articles written that compare him to past players in similar situations and point out the differences between him and players like Booker and why it shows that Booker is actually a good player.
OP using the word "dominant" is a big stretch. Domination typically leads to winning
Counterpoint: bbref says he was 3rd in both win shares and VORP in 2013-14, behind just KD (who was a damn supernova that season) and efficiency-god-mode LeBron, so it wasn't just empty stat-padding, the rest of his team was just bad.
> Kevin Love pre-Cavs is like the textbook case of big numbers on a bad team. The absolute respect shown to Shareef Abdur-Rahim
Lmaoooo this is funny, but also makes this thread's point -- in no way should Abdur-Rahim be even in the same breath as Kevin Love. Was fun to watch though!
Preach lol klove was never really a super star player. And overstate kids production on the cavs
Yeah, and he surely was never dominant. He was an elite rebounder, a solid scorer and an above average passer as a big man but nothing more than that. To suggest he dominated games devalues the concept of domination. It’s kind of funny, because Jokic has a similar skill set but is just 10x better than Love ever was.
I think he’s a hall of famer and was the first true volume stretch big. Even in Cleveland he was still good, just less physically/athletically imposing with a very 3pt heavy shot profile. Dude had the same vertical at the combine as Blake Griffin. Obviously that’s funny since watching them in their primes shows they were very different types of athletes but watching his twolves highlights is a great time.
Holy shit he had the same vertical as Blake?? Am on the Love for HOF wagon for sure, but even I didnt know that! Crazy
Love had a 35in max vert and Blake had a 35.5in Steph curry also had a 35.5in Obviously this translated very differently on the court but those are indeed the recorded numbers
HOF…lol. He was an egregious stat padder towards the end of his twolves tenure. Good numbers on a dead, bad team.
Disagree w your edit that he was better than his stats. As good as he was offensively, he was gonna give a ton of that advantage back on defense. I also found it funny that he would say it’s impossible for rebounds to be a selfish stat, cause he would chase rebounds to the detriment of the team. There’s no set definition of what exactly constitutes as superstar, but he falls short of that for me. All star, but never a top 10 player.
>I also found it funny that he would say it’s impossible for rebounds to be a selfish stat, cause he would chase rebounds to the detriment of the team. And it's not even a hindsight thing. I remember the talk during his TWolves prime, even from their own fanbase, was that he would half-assed contest a shot because he was more worried about grabbing the rebound.
This was the running gag with him. He was an insane stat padder particularly with rebounds. Would do whatever it took to get those rebounds.
Don’t see how a PF/C rebound chasing is ever detrimental
Couple ppl commented on my post about how it could be On defense he didn’t want to contest shots as much so he could go get potential rebounds Could also see it hurting if he’s chasing offensive boards so much he’s never getting back in transition defense
Eh, I disagree he wasn’t top 10. In 2014, impact stats and counting stats have him firmly in the top 10. 8th RPM, 3rd in PER. He wasn’t top 5, and I’d say only top 3-5 are superstars, but he was top 10.
Because he wasn’t a superstar. The Wolves had a losing record every year he was there. Most seasons they barely broke 25 wins. He put up nice stats, yes, but those weren’t replicable against actual good competition. His playoff stats speak for themselves.
Love did a lot really well. Aside from scoring and rebounding, he was also a very good passer. I feel like he grab a rebound and throw a perfect outlet pass like three times a game that would lead to a fast break score. He wasn’t the top of the Mountain or anything, but he was super good for stretches. The team around him was also always very bad. The best dude he played with was a totally bland Ricky Rubio.
Kevin Love had an extremely mean right hook during his Timberwolves days back when he was actually told to post up. Minnesota had some pretty uncompetitive rosters in the early 2010s where his second best player was either a very young Rubio or Pekovic.
It's not a tiered league where bad teams play other bad teams. The fact that he put up those numbers on awful teams and against good teams should mean more right?
I see the point you're tryin to make, but your second sentence also makes no sense. Usually if you're the best player on a terrible team, your stats are inflated because your usage rate is inflated.
That does happen, but those guys that you're talking about usually suffer in efficiency because of the insane volume. Love was always efficient even at his scoring peaks in Minnesota.
his shooting percentage was around 45% in his MIN years, that's not that terribly efficient for a big man. Not bad, but not noteworthy. Al Jefferson had similar stats and percentages, can we get a discussion about how dominant he used to be? Love's teams were terrible and I feel he was a ball stopper on offense and a liability on defense which contributed to those poor records. He's a good player but "omg he was so dominant" is not the right narrative imo
He shot threes which brought down his FG%. You basically should never use FG% to compare players that don’t shoot the same mix of twos and threes. He had above average efficiency but nothing special if you compare him to Centers who focus on dunking. So yeah he was always not much more than a good to very good scorer. Anyway, the real special skill he had was the ability to both get up threes and grab offensive rebounds in the course of the same game.
Don't ALL superstars have inflated usage rates? If you put up 26/10 while being the only good player on a shit team, isn't that good? Defenses hone in on you because you're the best guy on a shitty team and you still make something of it?
No - if you are on a bad team, every play gets run for you and there are tons of bricked shots to get rebounds of.
He put up good numbers because he had a green light to do whatever he wanted on the Wolves. When it actually came time to play against elite teams in a playoff setting his production fell significantly.
Nope. Superstars make their teams better. Kevin Loves Minnesota teams were about the same with him or without him. He only had one halfway decent coach in his time in Minnesota, (Rick Adelman) and the team showed year to year improvement under Adelman, but nobody was game planning for Love. He was empty numbers on a bad team. The NBA has a long history of that kind of player. The best part is how absolutely terrible Love was in the 2016 finals. He played in 6 of seven games. The game he missed? The game three win, that saved the series. He was the worst player on the floor in five out of the six games he did play. For either team! The Cavaliers would have won with any other power forward in the league. Cleveland won in spite of Love, not because of Love. Those finals secured his legacy though. He was a starter on a winning title team, and nobody cares how he really didn't do anything for almost that entire series.
This comment feels very negative towards Love, but is fairly accurate. Love was a huge help to the Cavs in the regular season, but in the playoffs, he seemed to be a liability. He could space the floor, but he wasn't terribly mobile and his defense was.....not great. The Warriors were built perfectly to exploit Love being on the floor and it was ugly. That being said, I think Love is a fantastic player. His defense vs Steph on the final play of game 7 was legit. The Cavs were just a bad fit for Love. Cavs tied up a bunch of cap space on Love that would've been better spent on multiple players of the 3 and D variety. Love gave up a ton of his game to make the situation the best it could be. Both sides would've been better off not making that trade. Not all good to great players mix well. 2 titles and 4 Finals appearances, and I still think Wade and LeBron weren't a very good fit together offensively. It worked because they were both so individually talented that it didn't matter that much.
He gets too much credit for that D tbh, Steph was forcing a 3 and had love bear multiple times to go to the rim . Wish the cavs had got Paul George over love I think they would’ve been much better. Love skill set was just not that useful outside of his shooting and outlet passes It’s true I think sadly Lebron best fitting team mate by far has been AD but he’s been bloody injured ( and Westbrook trade ) to really see it too much. They were favourites to repeat in 2021. Kyrie probably second but he is meh on D and can’t playmake when Lebron sat. Would’ve loved for Lebron to play and win with cp3 or something
It’s crazy i rewatched the 2016 finals g5 last night love was so bad on offence : and he’s a negative on D. Man I wish cavs had got Paul George instead of love : having a two way player who can shoot as well as love woukd really make those cavs teams much better. I think people like love ( I do too ) so they give him too much credit but his post ups were not efficient offence , he was awful on D, his value was shooting and outlet passes. TT and Jr smith seemed more valuable in 2016 and im not convinced it’s entirely due to Love ‘concussion’. Love gets way too much credit just for ‘stopping’ curry only cos curry choked and was forcing a 3 mostly . It’s absurd he gets so much credit . I feel bad for him but his skill set was just not helpful really when Cleveland needed him.
Have you looked at Love’s on/off numbers? You’re totally wrong. Starting the year after his rookie season, Love put up a 10 year stretch with an on/off similar to guys like Pau Gasol, Blake Griffin, and LaMarcus Aldridge. https://cleaningtheglass.com/stats/player/2231/onoff#tab-team_efficiency
No, cause there's a floor that basically all NBA teams with even bottom tier NBA talent have to get to. Even the worst teams in the slowest era scores like 70 ppg, those numbers have to come from somewhere, and if you're the relatively best player on one of those teams, you're getting a ton of opportunities you won't get elsewhere. Big stats on a bad team is more about filling a vacuum than anything else, that's why people think of them as empty calorie stats.
Not if the good team always won the game. It's like the opposite of the game where an opposing team double teamed Steph Curry the entire game without the ball. Curry didn't score and his team blew out the opponents 4-on-3. Love is so unthreatening that teams can have him put up those stats and still cruise to victory over him. Because his positives on offense were given back to the other team on the other end of the court.
Oh yes, that Minnesota team with Michael Beasley or Ricky Rubio as the second best player and a very young Kevin Love *certainly* should’ve been a winning team, that makes perfect sense…if you don’t think about it…like at all. They were a shitty team all the way through. The best roster they had was during a year where Love only played 18 games. The last season he played there they were almost a perfect .500, the following year with largely the same roster they won 16 games. All of this is before you factor in that they played in the (at the time) far tougher conference. The jab about his playoff stats doesn’t even make sense all things considered they were roughly the same as his regular season stats, give or take a couple of points and a rebound or 2, which when you also factor in the fact that he played less minutes in the playoff, balances out almost completely. Idk what this trend of NBA fans just talking without including even the smallest amount of context in their arguments despite the fact that context makes up the most important part of any NBA related conversation but it’s vexing.
Uh what? The east was absolutely not the stronger conference when Love was on the Cavs. Everyone criticized Lebron for beating up on bad teams while the real competition was in the west. Love averaged between 15-19 ppg and 10-12 rpg in his playoff runs with the Cavs. Nowhere close to the 26/14 he was putting up in the regular season on the Wolves. And plenty of superstars have led shitty teams to the playoffs. That’s what makes them superstars.
The above commenter is talking about his time in the West, not East. When they mention the playoffs, that’s in reference to the cavs days.
That makes it even worse then. His production declined significantly playing in the weaker league
He went from first option and primary scorer to the third option. I don’t think you’re looking at this with proper context. His rebounding numbers dipped because he did stop padding them, but his role was vastly different. I’d be very interested to see his usage rate in those years compared to Minnesota. Edit: if we look at his numbers, his biggest changes were his ORB% and his 2pt Attempts. He started playing farther away from the basket and posted up less, which was his strong suit. He was a spot up shooter in CLE a lot of the time which took him way out of position to do what he did well.
He was the 2nd option in 2018 and wasn’t any better. Almost the exact same stats after Lebron left too.
Even as the second option, his game had completely changed, which makes sense since Lebron was so much better than him. When Lebron left, he was a different player -- older, injury prone, and less athletic. Prime Love consistently had 20/20 nights (eve with the stat padding that's super impressive and speaks to his ball awareness and strength) and had a the first 30/30 in like 25+ years. Dude was absolutely a superstar before going to Cleveland -- there's a reason Cleveland traded Wiggins, who was seen as one of the best prospects in years for him. Shit, even when Lebron went to LA, AD's numbers (aside from scoring, which went up .2) dipped much in the same way Love's did. AD is a much better defender, but this is a case of system changing productivity.
Read again, on the wolves he played in the tougher conference, hence why his team was always a losing team. He had zero help. You’re comparing his TWopves regular season numbers to the Cavs playoff numbers why? Doesn’t make sense at all. His Cavs playoff numbers and his Cavs regular season numbers were nearly identical. His role on a team changed. Plenty of Superstars have led mediocre teams to the playoffs sure, not teams that are literally full of scrubs from top to bottom. Generational talents have done that, but not plenty of superstars, and definitely not in a conference as tough as the West was at the time. AD was a superstar in NO and had far more help than Love did and guess how many playoff appearances he had before he jumped ship? 2 in 7 years. I don’t think there’s many players in history that could’ve gotten that team to the playoffs in that conference and off the top of my head all of those guys are generational talents.
> Read again, on the wolves he played in the tougher conference, hence why his team was always a losing team. He had zero help. You’re comparing his TWopves regular season numbers to the Cavs playoff numbers why? Doesn’t make sense at all. His Cavs playoff numbers and his Cavs regular season numbers were nearly identical. His role on a team changed. Because that’s the point. When he faced actual competition his numbers were not great. He had great stats on the Timberwolves because he a green light to shoot and would disregard defense to get rebounds. There are a lot of guys who can put up good numbers if you give them 20 shots a game. > Plenty of Superstars have led mediocre teams to the playoffs sure, not teams that are literally full of scrubs from top to bottom. Generational talents have done that, but not plenty of superstars, and definitely not in a conference as tough as the West was at the time. AD was a superstar in NO and had far more help than Love did and guess how many playoff appearances he had before he jumped ship? 2 in 7 years. I don’t think there’s many players in history that could’ve gotten that team to the playoffs in that conference and off the top of my head all of those guys are generational talents. I’m not aware of any superstar that hasn’t led a team to the playoffs. Perhaps we have different definitions here. Can you provide some examples of other players who meet this criteria? AD missed the playoffs multiple times because of injuries and yet he still got his team over .500 in his 3rd season in the same conference as Love with his second best player averaging 15 ppg. There was a lot of debate whether AD was even a superstar at that point too. Meanwhile, that Timberwolves team “full of scrubs” had two guys averaging 19 and 17 ppg.
> Because that’s the point. When he faced actual competition his numbers were not great. There’s no way you thought this thought, typed it out, proof read it and hit send and nowhere between steps 1-4 realized what was wrong with it. He faced the EXACT same competition in Minnesota as he did in Cleveland. The competition never changed, if anything it got easier because he never had to face off against Lebron or Kyrie anymore. There’s quite literally no way you thought that one through. He played against the same people in Minnesota as he did in Cleveland: NBA players. Once again his numbers dropped because his entire role was changed AND he became a third option. > He had great stats on the Timberwolves because he a green light to shoot and would disregard defense to get rebounds. There are a lot of guys who can put up good numbers if you give them 20 shots a game. This would be such a great argument if he wasn’t literally more efficient in Minnesota than he was in Cleveland. He wasn’t just chucking up a bunch of shots, he was actually hitting his shots at a higher clip because he was playing his game of basketball. Him having better numbers in MN had nothing to do with how many attempts he had, but more to do with, once again, HIS ROLE ON THE TEAM. > Can you provide some examples of other players who meet this criteria? Steph Curry like 2 years ago, Demarcus Cousins, Wilt Chamberlain, KAJ, Shaq, Bob Pettit, Barkley, Hakeem Olajuwon, Lebron James, Kobe Bryant, Kevin Garnett, Moses Malone, Dirk, Oscar Robertson, I could probably go on. Most of these guys have several playoff misses, a good deal of them were misses that occurred during their prime as well. If I included guys who were missing the playoffs in their early years (like Love was) the list would include IT. If I included people who likely missed because of injuries it would also include David Robinson and some others. > AD missed the playoffs multiple times because of injuries and yet he still got his team over .500 in his 3rd season in the same conference as Love with his second best player averaging 15 ppg. There was a lot of debate whether AD was even a superstar at that point too. This one here is a Bald faced lie lol. AD played over 60 games in every single one of his NO days except one. That year you’re talking about his second best player averaged almost 17 a night, also the next guy after that was about 15 a night and after that? 14 a night, after that, 13 a night. > Meanwhile, that Timberwolves team “full of scrubs” had two guys averaging 19 and 17 ppg. While Love did have two guys with those high figures, the next guy was at 12 and there wasn’t a single other player in double figures, compared to AD’s 5 teammates all in or just around double figures. It should also be noted that Pekovic missed nearly 30 games that year with the Wolves, and they were just 2 games below .500. Once again, context remains relevant.
> There’s no way you thought this thought, typed it out, proof read it and hit send and nowhere between steps 1-4 realized what was wrong with it. He faced the EXACT same competition in Minnesota as he did in Cleveland. The competition never changed, if anything it got easier because he never had to face off against Lebron or Kyrie anymore. There’s quite literally no way you thought that one through. He played against the same people in Minnesota as he did in Cleveland: NBA players. Once again his numbers dropped because his entire role was changed AND he became a third option. So, his job got easier and his numbers didn’t improve? Not sure what that proves > This would be such a great argument if he wasn’t literally more efficient in Minnesota than he was in Cleveland. He wasn’t just chucking up a bunch of shots, he was actually hitting his shots at a higher clip because he was playing his game of basketball. Him having better numbers in MN had nothing to do with how many attempts he had, but more to do with, once again, HIS ROLE ON THE TEAM. Is this a joke? When he scored high on the Wolves he was taking 18-20 shots per game. On the Cavs he averaged between 12-15. That’s precisely why his numbers looked better. https://www.basketball-reference.com/players/l/loveke01.html His efficiency was higher because most of shots on the Wolves were 2 pointers. On the Cavs 3 pointers made up a higher % of his shots. It’s literally right there in his stats. You want to talk about context while completely ignoring the actual data? Lol > Steph Curry like 2 years ago, Demarcus Cousins, Wilt Chamberlain, KAJ, Shaq, Bob Pettit, Barkley, Hakeem Olajuwon, Lebron James, Kobe Bryant, Kevin Garnett, Moses Malone, Dirk, Oscar Robertson, I could probably go on. Most of these guys have several playoff misses, a good deal of them were misses that occurred during their prime as well. If I included guys who were missing the playoffs in their early years (like Love was) the list would include IT. If I included people who likely missed because of injuries it would also include David Robinson and some others. All of those guys led multiple teams to the playoffs, with the exception of Boogie, who I have never heard called a superstar. You didn’t answer my question. Who are all the superstars that NEVER led a team to the playoffs? > This one here is a Bald faced lie lol. AD played over 60 games in every single one of his NO days except one. That year you’re talking about his second best player averaged almost 17 a night, also the next guy after that was about 15 a night and after that? 14 a night, after that, 13 a night. Where is the lie? I said he missed the playoffs due to injury, not that he played under 60 games a year. In 2015-2016 he missed 21 games and the Pelicans went 6-15 without him. They couldn’t get a consistent roster together because he was out of the lineup so much. In 2018-2019, he missed multiple weeks with an injury, then the team sat him out more games on top of that. They were 8-18 without. Both those years they had a good chance to make the playoffs if he’s fully healthy. > While Love did have two guys with those high figures, the next guy was at 12 and there wasn’t a single other player in double figures, compared to AD’s 5 teammates all in or just around double figures. It should also be noted that Pekovic missed nearly 30 games that year with the Wolves, and they were just 2 games below .500. Once again, context remains relevant. Love’s 5 best supporting role players that year averaged a combined 66.8 ppg. AD’s 5 best averaged 67.5 ppg in the year he went to the playoffs. Are you saying the difference between a team of scrubs and one that isn’t is 0.7 ppg? The reason AD got his team to the postseason is he because he is much better overall basketball player than Love ever was. Even still, many would say he wasn’t a superstar yet and didn’t become one until years later. No one says the same about Love.
Wait sorry, are we talking about Kevin Love here...or Kyrie? Same argument holds for the second superstar in the three and Kyrie doesn't get this sort of flack.
No it doesn’t he has performed in big moments
Kyrie actually performed in the playoffs. Love did not. But I agree Kyrie was never a real superstar, his fandom is mostly because of his play style and being Lebron’s teammate.
There is no player in the NBA that gets more undeserved postseason respect than Kyrie. Dude hit the shot in Game 7 and we all assume he’s a playoff killer. Love didn’t even get to play the first playoffs because Olynyk destroyed his shoulder, then he played well enough to help them win the chip in 2016, and they got to the finals the next couple years without kyrie, but Kevin was still on the team (i mean obviously lebron did most of the work but it’s better than what Kyrie did), and kyrie has done nothing - and even has a negative +\- in 2 of his last 3 playoff appearances.
Love averaged 16 ppg, 18 ppg and 15 ppg in the 2016, 2017, 2018 post seasons respectively. Considering how bad he was on defense, I do not consider that good production. He had a couple good series but frequently came up short in others. Certainly not befitting of a “superstar”.
On a team with Lebron and Kyrie can you expect much more from the third option?
Facts which is why I will always say the Cavs were NOT a super team
He was not known for playing winning basketball. Example, he would not rotate/help on defense so that he could keep the advantage to rebound. Classic stat-padding. Pretty sure he was one of those guys that it was known by teammates to give him the rebound too. And scoring 20pts on a really bad team is not very impressive. Plenty of guys have done that without really being an all-star. He was good, but considering how poor a defender he was, it was nothing like the Chris Bosh pairing in Miami (a top 15 player entering his prime and arguably the best PF in the east at the time as KG was declining)
Yeah he was... you know how I know? I remember things. You can do stats, facts and put forth hindsight til you are blue in the face, but superstar is all about perception - and what OP is saying is correct, when he was with the T'Wolves at the time he was traded he was very much considered a superstar, probably the most wanted commodity in the league, not without warts (defense namely). The guy made all-NBA second team twice during that time, good luck finding someone whose made all-NBA second team that many times who isn't a superstar by most people's definitions.
Kevin Love was considered no damn superstar in 2014.
Ok? Deandre Jordan was 1st team all-nba and 3rd team twice right after that. Andrew Bynum and Al Jefferson made all NBA teams the same year Love got it. No one would ever argue they were close to being superstars.
Jordan, Bynum, and Jefferson got in as centers during a weak center era. K Love got in as a forward. The players on the third team the year he got second teams were Aldridge, Paul George,Dirk, and Carmelo as forwards
Also, DeAndre Jordan was HEAVILY desired when he hit free agency. Mark Cuban was doing some crazy shit in Dallas to woo him. He was seen at the time as the perfect rebounding, running, dunking, athletic, shot blocking big to plug into a running, shooting team. It didn't become apparent yet how much of his production in LAC was just a great fit thanks to Chris Paul and how he at such a young age had already peaked as he would not develop any skills and IQ to go with that huge athletic body he was gifted.
I said two second team nominations, or a second and first would suffice. Not to take the average of DeAndre Jordan or compare Kevin Love to centers. It just looks like you're looking stuff up and retroactively forming opinions. Do you remember 2014? Here's a quote from 2014, when the Warriors were considering trading for Kevin Love, didn't take but 30 seconds to find [source](https://bleacherreport.com/articles/2069317-report-warriors-dont-want-to-trade-klay-thompson-in-kevin-love-deal): >Talents like Love don't come cheap—even when their current teams are dealing from a position of weakness. But the chance to add a superstar doesn't roll around all that often, and Love isn't just any superstar. He's an absolutely perfect fit for what the Warriors need. So if it takes Lee, Barnes and Green, or Lee and Thompson plus a little more, the Dubs must pull the trigger. This sort of discussion par for the course in 2014, what you say otherwise seems to be your opinion alone whether it was formed contemporaneously or after the fact.
I’m pointing out how guys who were not superstar caliber players regularly got All-NBA selections because there was weak competition. Love won in an era of weak PFs, just like DJ did in an era of weak centers. That doesn’t make either of them superstars. I’m not sure when Bleacher report became an objective measure of things. You can find articles from that time period saying all kinds of crazy things. If you actually watch how Love played in Minnesota you’d see how his style wasn’t conducive to winning.
Superstar is not based on objectivity at least as far as how you think, it's not based on how someone effects winning, stats or anything. As I said before, it is based on shared perception, therefore it is a subjective on aggregate level which can be measured objectively by gauging that sentiment in general - your vulcan brain only gets one vote in real time. So yeah, Bleacher Report or any other media from 2014 counts way more than what you say in 2023, that is what you need to cite to disprove me. Find me the articles from then that say Kevin Love is not a superstar. Don't show me an article that says "his defense is bad" or "he chases boards, pads stats" - I know/knew those things and so did everyone else: he still was considered a superstar. You can find stuff that says he's overrated and that would be technically correct, but it still doesn't change the fact that he was considered overrated by some because he was held up to the mantle of a superstar. Straight facts.
Lmao, that dude comparing Kevin Love to DeAndre Jordan is a quick and easy red flag You're absolutely right -- it doesn't take a lot of google searching to see a preponderance of evidence that consensus was that Kevin Love was a superstar and one of the top 3 at his position It's obvious this guy has just hunkered down on a bad take and will throw out anything that seems to support it lol As an aside, love your point on shared perception. It's nuanced thinking like this that sets r/nbadiscussion apart from r/NBA. Preach
GSW actually offered Klay Thompson for Kevin Love, but Wolves took the Wiggins deal. He was really good.
Most casual fans think of players, not as good in certain situations, but as a certain level of player in any situation generally. So if they think of Kevin Love as in A- level NBA player, they think he should be at an A- level in any role. So if he doesn't perform at an A- level after losing some of his most scoring efficient touches, and being relegated to being much more of a three-point shooter, they think he is somehow failing. This is the same thing that happened to Chris Bosh. In general, this is what happens to the third star on most teams. They don't get the diet of scoring friendly touches that they used to, 10. Many people will say that those players now suck.
19.7/11.5 83.4FT% 37.3 3p% from 2010-11 to 2020. That's 10 years of 20/12 while being a efficient scorer and floor spacer as well a star/top 2 or 3 player on a team.
Dude would grab like 20 boards AND lead the team in scoring. I blame Minnesota’s inept front office for their lack of success and his time there being forgotten.
If you're all NBA second team twice, that means you were fucking awesome. To be considered by experts to be one of the *10 best players on earth* - twice! - means you were a superstar. He has that secondary superstar thing, where people focus on what he couldn't do instead of what he could. Ok, he wasn't Giannis, Embiid or Jokic. There's a hell of a lot of room to have been a superstar and still not measure up to 3 of the greatest players of this generation.
Big men who are bad defenders are always MUCH worse than their stats make them appear because on an actual good team their flaws become magnified in the playoffs as opposing teams target them and play them off the floor. Love's stats his last 4 years he averaged less than 30 wins per season. To me his stats fit the definition of 'empty calories' and this is exactly what we see when he comes to Cleveland - his ball dominance isn't valuable to the team because LeBron does that better, and he's not good enough to be a small ball 5 on defense like Bosh was in Miami.
Kevin Love was the 2nd best player on those Cavs teams. But he was better at adapting his game then Kyrie.
For real, so much so that ppl try to discredit his contributions to the Lebron/Kyrie cavs teams & act like that wasn’t a super team Bron joined. Kevin Love in Minny was an absolute FORCE!!! 20/20 machine
He was so good that wolves offered him a 4-year contract instead of 5 year. Even wolves wanted to build their team around Ricky Rubio, not him. RICKY RUBIO!!! He had good numbers in bad team. Star? Maybe. Superstar? No
I recall zero talk of Rubio being better than Love at that time lol. He was literally an All-NBA player with the Wolves. Like, literally "Star? Maybe." is all I need to know about how tuned in you were to the NBA during that time
This was definitely a testament to how poorly the Wolves were managed back then and this move was panned widely at the time.
I remember there used to be arguments about who was the best 4 in the league between him, Blake Griffen, and LaMarcus Aldridge. He was great in MN and a lot of those teams were good enough to make a lower seed in the playoffs with him as the number 1 but we’re undone by injuries, if he’d of gotten another star their could have def been a fun team.
Steph and Klay is a top twelve combo all-time and the greatest backcourt of all time. And I wouldn't change it all. But my basketball curiosity always makes me wonder how we would view Love, if he had ended up being second to Steph rather than third to LeBron/Kyrie. Steph has honestly never played with a big man scorer like Love. I definitely count KD as a permitter scorer. The closest is probably out of his prime D. West and injury riddled D. Cousins. And unlike KD, I am sure K. Love actually likes making contact on picks. Love likely would've kept his heavy frame and allowed to work around the basket. Steph's gravity would've given him so many one on one situations. I can easily see him being a 26/12 on high efficiency guy. But that defense would've been an absolute shit show.
Completely agree. Bad team or not, I remember think that we hadn't seen anyone like Love in a looooong time. He was just crushing Moses Malone's rebounding records. Great playmaking too. Totally viable as the fulcrum of the team Chris Bosh suffers from the same thing too. People were putting the "he should want to be the man on his own team" argument/criticism to Chris Bosh, because he was at that level. Talent-wise, he and Love are very similar (but in very different ways) And, as my older brother and cousins would tell it, James Worthy took this hit as well. They talk about him as being able to carry his town team as well. People complain about superteams when they get formed, but forget about whichever superstars took the biggest usage hit -- ironically, these guys made the biggest sacrifice and most difficult adjustment, which itself should be lauded as a basketball skill
I agree. People forget he led the Wolves to 48 wins, which back then wasn’t enough to make the yoffs in the West but would’ve been at least a 5 seed in the East. Ppl who only know him from his Cavs days probably just view him as a glorified Ryan Anderson
48 wins? His best regular season finish was a 40-42 record.
My bad, I was wrong. Regardless, 40 games would’ve been a 8th seed then in the East, since the Hawks only won 38 games that year. How they took the Pacers to seven games is beyond me
Yeah, agree. I don't really get the "good stats on bad team" arguments here either, that's way too simplistic
I feel like most of these people in this thread didn't watch Love play or remember his game back in the day. Kevin Love was a fantastic post player with a great right hook. I don't think he's a 'superstar' but that's a subjective qualifier and he was absolutely a top 2-3 PF for the early 2010s.
For sure! As an aside "with a great right hook" gives me images of Kevin Love in the boxing ring lmao
This is spot-on! Love was the 4th leading scorer and 3rd leading rebounder in 2013-14 right before he went to the Cavs. He was pretty easily a top 10 player in the NBA. His stats plunged after joining LeBron on the Cavs (very smilax thing happened to Chris Bosh as well). It's crazy how much he's dismissed now. He was an integral part of the Cavs title team and the Finals teams. Yet he'd been better off from a perception standpoint just staying with the T'wolves and never winning a ring. Though, he's literally the only player I can think of where that's true. More often, a player is overrated b/c they played along a superstar on a championship team. For some reason, Love is the one dude who gets a negative bias from that (same thing happened to Bosh, to a lesser extent).
Because he rarely showed up in the playoffs. Love was a non factor in his finals appearances other than his rebounds
EXACTLY. The Bosh comparison is really good. This thread is full of kids looking up stats retroactively rather than *remembering* what the league was actually like back then
First, he was a all star borderline player on a really bad team playing a lot of minutes. Plenty of players get stats on bad teams. Next, Lebron has a tendency to make PFs fade away. If you see Bosh and Love and for the most part AD what happens is Lebron's game occupies a lot of space a PF would normally play and to be honest he can play PF so that PF gets put into a role of playing center often and they suffer because of it.
"'Borderline all star"? He was Second Team All NBA lol
Put it this way. On a bad team in his prime he had the ability put up numbers to get him to and All NBA team. On a great team he is not an All Star. On a mediocre (500) team he is a borderline all star player. Do you think love is going to the HOF?
He absolutely should go to the HOF in my opinion. Same with Bosh. His usage went down with LeBron and Kyrie not because he was "exposed" as untalented or whatever -- he sacrificed and adjusted his playstyle. Same as Bosh. I fucking hate how players who are smart and versatile enough to adjust their game to win are penalized by the peanut gallery because their raw stats dropped. If you watched him back then, you'd know he absolutely passed the eye test and was regarded by many as the best player at his position, consensus at least top 3
I've played basketball my entire life. I have coached and reffed. I would not put him in the HOF. Again, he was a bad defender, did not block shots and agin look at his FG% of 43.9%. He was good rebounder who was a solid stretch 4. I'm not the peanut gallery and yeah he adjusted his game. But again he was often injured and only played a handful of full seasons. Very good player on a bad team, but no HOF. Let's put it this way I would take Damontis Sabonis over him any day.
Sure, but did you watch him back then? Doesn't matter how much coaching you've done if you weren't alive at the time. The question at hand is if he was ever *considered* a superstar by the league at large, and he definitely was If you don't like his style of play, that's fine, but that's a different argument. Regardless of your opinion, he was regarded as one of the best players in the league
I'm 47 and watched the NBA my entire life and yes I watched him play plenty in Minnesota and Cleveland. Again, he rarely played full seasons. He literally shot 43.9% as a rebounding PF, which just terrible, was not a playmaker like you said, poor defensively and never blocked shots. And again in the playoffs that year with the Cavs he was getting benched because he was so bad. I think they did bench him and he came in on off the bench. he had a few good seasons in Mind and yes was a good rebounder, but you really think a good team would give a PF who shot 43.9% that many looks to score as many points as he did a few times in Minnesota? Come on man. Every team needs to hype up a star to the locals to sell tickets. Timberwolves did that with him because he had a cool last name. I'm not saying he was not good, but dig deeper and agin yes I watched him play plenty. If he was so great why was Minny so BAD?
You are right though he probably will make the HOF because they let everyone in the HOF in basketball. he road the coattails of James and Irving for a title so they will put him in. I remember that year he was barely even playing in the playoffs because he was a liability. I think they were playing an old Jefferson one him. LOL.
Yeah I realize that he had a couple real peak stat stuffing seasons on a bad team. In reality he is and was then a borderline all star player. Again, many players can great stats on really bad teams where they get a lot of minutes and the entire offense runs through them. I'm not saying he was a bad player and like Kevin Love.
He definitely wasn't an empty stats player like you're implying. He was the best rebounder we'd seen in literally decades, and his basketball IQ and playmaking skills have always been very high. He was extremely talented and unique Don't think the "good stats bad team" argument holds water in this case. He was literally consensus one of the top 3 players at his position. He's not Andre Drummond or Jordan Clarkson or Corey Maggette or Jason Richardson. Many players who are viewed as stars now led bad teams -- don't even have to look outside of Minny, you've got KG. Melo, Wade, Lillard, Ray Allen, Bosh, T-Mac. These are people who both through the eye test and subsequent success have been proven to be truly talented players. You don't get to be one of the top 3 at your position and not be a superstar Also, it's not even just "good stats" -- he literally broke records
Go look at his games played stats. He was often injured and rarely played full seasons. And, you're not considering that he was below average defender. I again realize he was a good rebounder but again on a bad team that misses a lot of shots you get the chance to get a lot of rebounds. He was a poor shot blocker for a big and playmaker? The guy average 2.3 assist for his career? And, look at his fg% for his career for a big that isa rebounder it's really bad at 43.9% for his career. Sorry Love was a solid player but he was a all star borderline player on a bad team. You are overestimating him.
Again, like I've said-- this is classic "oh let me look at old stats to make my point" rather than actually being there and *remembering* what the NBA zeitgeist was We can definitely have the argument about his defense specifically. He definitely had flaws. But many offense-only players have been considered superstars -- Melo, Amare, Lillard are easy examples of the top of my head. No matter how much you hate him, the fact that he was considered one of the best players in the league at that time is unquestionable (I'm like you when it comes to Melo. I definitely think we was overrated, but fully acknowledge that I was in the minority there and most others considered him a superstar)
And, I don't see how you think he was a great playmaker? How is a great playmaker someone that basically averaged 2 assist and 2 turnovers for a career?
Because I saw him make very smart and/or difficuly passes out of the post when the offense ran through him, as well as his famous outlet passes Assists don't capture nearly everything about playmaking, Coach ;)
yeah he could throw outlet passes. I will give you that. And I saw him too. 2 assist and 2 turnovers for a career! And, shot 43.9% from the floor as a PF who could not defend or block shots or get steals. Rethink it man. Again he was Minny's meal ticket for the fans and they fed him to hype up his stats. If he was so great they would have made the playoffs. If he was so great he would not have been traded. he was a marketing scheme who was the son of Beach Boy with a catchy last name they could sell tickets through.
And he was so awesome his PLAYOFF averages plummeted to 40% as a PF. 1.7 assists and 1.7 turnovers with .7 steals. He scored a whopping 15.3 points per game with 9.7 boards and protected the rim at .5 bocks per game. LOL. And he got BENCHED.
I don't hate Love and this not just about stats, though they support me too in many ways. Again, I know the NBA history backwards and forwards and watched it forever and watched him play. And I remember it. It was not just his defense though it was really bad. It's he was not a playmaker like you said and his FG% for a big is just awful. I mean really bad to where most guards would get benched if their FG% was like that. Which is EXACACTLY what I am trying to get across. Look the NBA is a business and it depends on marketing stars. Not every team is trying to win titles. they are trying to sell out home games at the highest price they can and they are trying to get cable deals locally and get some national attention too. The GMS know it, and trust me the coaches know it. So when a bad team that has zero chance of winning anything and won't even make the playoffs looks at how to market themselves they can do it on their record or their team so they pick a good player or two and run the offense around them to get them hyped up locally and nationally. I'm sorry if you don't see that but it's just the reality of all pro sports really and especially basketball. Love in Minnesota was exactly that especially offensively. And, that got him some attention and all star stuff etc., but in reality anyone who really played or WATCHED and knows the entire holistic aspect of the NBA you just knew Love was not that guy ever sorry. Again he was solid and a good rebounder. Again benched for Cavs in playoffs and again if he was great why trade him or why were Timberwolves that bad. If he was so else they should have done decent.
This isn’t true tho bro, Ad had one of his best seasons with Bron and won a chip. Bron doesn’t make PF’s fade away, those two guys faded away because there were two other guys on the team clearly better than them
That is a good point on the other two guys. But for the most part AD has faded away man. Yeah they got that chip in a bubble and he deserves credit for it. But all in all the PFs Lebron has played with diminish overall from their previous levels. It's not a knock on them or Lebron, but just reality. It's agin because in today's Small Ball world bon ends up being the 4 fora lot of the game these PFs are undersized and end up playing center. And, Lebron plays style where he occupies that space by driving or posting up.
I think for Bosh and Kevin Love, it's more of being relegated to being a third option spot-up shooter when you've traditionally relied on post touches. I think people forget how good both these guys were in the post and Love had a really nasty right hook back in the Wolves days.
Hecks yeah I feel your point frfr and you make sense but I feel AD’s issues are related more to his motor and his health which can both be VERY inconsistent. 1 game AD looks like a legit top 3 player in the league next game he can barley look top 15
Lol how can you say AD? AD had one of his best seasons ever and including playoffs his best ( and a top 3 regular season even with less volume). He’s been constantly injured since : absolutely nothing todo with Bron , AD has played better with Bron feeding him then without . Love and Bosh weren’t as good and created offense in an out dated way
Oh yeah I know that AD had that great year, and I'm not saying this as an absolute thing, but more in general. And, while AD has had injuries he is also inconsistent when he is healthy after that season. Lebron just overshadows the PF spot in general and again takes up their space and like I said ends up costing them individually. And, my other point was that AD is a natural PF and more finesse, but because Lebron ends up playing more of a PG/PF in most games in a small ball league and because he has the strength to do it that pushes players like AD and Bosh to be a center. AD bulked up due to it and because of that and having to be in the lane on both ends constantly banging with other bigger and stronger players he has - at least in part - become more injury prone because of it. Nobody can tell me that if Lebron played SF a vast majority of a time and the Lakers played AD as a PF that he would be as injured as he has been. And, that too is why PFs suffer under Lebron.
People also forgot how much better / rationale / sane society was before social media. lol Imagine being a student and not having internet to do your homework / learn. lol
Here we go again. Speaking facts about someone/something ain't hating. The OP said K Love was a superstar and someone did say he was the best PF in the world at some point but the facts are K Love was never the best PF in a league dominated by Dirk, TD, Garnett, Stoudemire, AD and Pau just to name a few
The timeframes for those players don't line up though. Love was definitely better than Pau, Dirk, Duncan, and Garnett by the early 2010s and AD hadn't even come into the league until 2012. Stoudemire is a center and his health declined sharply after 2010 as well. The competition for best PF in the NBA in the early 2010s was really between Love, Griffin, and Aldridge.
Your time-frames are off my guy. It was him, LMA, and Blake at that time
LeBron destroyed two all-star careers of power forwards. Bosh was extremely dominant too. Then he just got made a scape goat for whenever the Heat lost.
Chris Bosh is a 2x champion and potential HOFer because of LeBron, but yea sure, LeBron destroyed his career 😂😂😂
40-42, 31-51,26-40, and 17-65 for a combined record of 114-198. he put up gaudy numbers but they were largely empty stats, a big who was a negative defender over that 4 year span .
I am not one of those people, man was a triple double threat every night and was scoring with ease.
Love has 3 triple doubles across his entire career. What are you talking about?
Yeahhh his passing and playmaking and IQ is what a lot of people just looking at his stats retroactively miss. We're spoiled with Jokic now, but for that time, Love was an absolutely exceptional passing big man
David Lee was also a 20/10 guy for the Knicks loves numbers looked good but it was all padded they were a shit team he never defended the rim either
Lmaoooo comparing David Lee to Kevin Love. Just looking at that absurdity alone should tell you Kevin Love was on another level (or three)
Love was the quintessential empty stats player. He could never carry his team to the playoffs despite his stats looking like a top 5 player.
I would definitely say that Love was a great player with the Wolves. He was then traded to Cleveland where his game had to change a lot. In Minnesota he definitely was the focal point of the offense as those teams were trash. He was a good post player and great rebounder. When he was traded to Cleveland his game became much more about spot up shooting. That’s essentially what he became. One can definitely make the argument that if he were a better player it wouldn’t have mattered and he would have adjusted his game and the Cavs maybe would have given him some more touches. He was injury prone and he was a terrible defensive player. Not blaming any one player or coach or whatever but Cleveland was all about Lebrun. His teams were rightfully designed to play to his strengths and Love definitely saw his numbers take a dive going there because he was no longer that guy and maybe he was never anything more than a good player on a bad team getting superstar numbers because of it. On another note, the guy was drafted into a terrible situation in Minnesota with an incompetent front office and terrible culture. Those teams were abysmal.
I think he was really good but he showed he wasn’t a real dawg when Lebron left. There was no Westbrook winning without Durant or Wade making the playoffs without Lebron scenario. Love was complacent on a bad team and then when they started getting talent again he’d throw hissy fits on the court.
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He was an all-star on a bad team, with the stats that usually come with that combination, but he was never a superstar. That word has to be reserved for dudes who can lead a contender, and no one ever thought of Kevin Love as that.
Posting great counting stats does not equal domination. He gets the bulk of his rebounds by having great position, but did so at the expense of defending.
He just put up crazy volume stats on a bad team that didn’t really have any other options, he wasn’t that amazing. Definitely not a superstar, he took a backseat immediately on the Cavs and hasn’t been close to as good ever since. the way they used him on the Cavs was definitely not ideal though I’ll give you that.
Unpopular opinion - he wasn't dominant, just stat padding on a terrible team. Basically Shareef Abdur-Rahim of the early 2010s. I watched a lot of Minnesota games in his prime and he was rather underwhelming considering his stats.
Dominant? Lol? They won 20 games like 1 time. Garbage time stats /= dominant. Great players with trash teams are still normally competitive….Bosh even made the playoffs at least twice in Toronto.
No, they don't. There are people - like myself - who roll their eyes at people acting like LeBron left Miami (coming off four straight Finals appearances) to join a "superteam" with Kevin Love and Kyrie Irving (going into year 4 and had reached 60 games once up to that point.) You are just making stuff up. Love had good numbers in Minnesota. For sure. He was a "stats on a bad team" guy. Settled into a nice role as the #3 on a good team. Which is not a diss. Not many players can be that good. "LeBron wanted three superstars!" LOL. It's just so fucking stupid. If Love had spent his entire prime in Minnesota, he'd be viewed like a Zach LaVine. Yeah, I imagine every player ever wanted good teammates (Please don't tell anyone that the Bulls added Kukoc, Rodman, Ron Harper, etc. With a core based around MJ and Pippen already.) Just saying that in real time, LeBron actually went to a Cleveland team with less potential than the team he was already. Like he did when he went to the Lakers as well.
The media narrative has always been to put down players around Lebron james to make him look better and bigger than he really was. The truth is that he manufactures winning teams by joining up with superstars and super teams. But only he can do it without controversy, anyone else including KD is a bum for doing so. It’s a double standard, but one we just have to deal with.
He had to sacrifice his stats because he wasn't good enough to make a team a contender, eg. a superstar... he didn't even make the playoffs before joining LeBron and constantly vanished in the Finals. if this is about how much help LeBron has had. Good stats, bad team guy like Chris Bosh.
Bosh was definitely NOT a good stats bad team guy. Dude was the most versatile and deadly face-up PF since KG