On Dec. 15, Kevin Love became eligible to be traded from the Cleveland Cavaliers. Five days later, his teammate Kyrie Irving returned from a kneecap break to play his first game of the season with the Cavs. Love and Irving don’t play the same position, they’re hardly rivals, but the Cleveland power forward’s numbers have gone down sharply in Irving’s presence, in spite of a seeming on-paper batch of workability between the two.
Infamously, it was reported that when the Cavs called a team meeting to announce the firing of former coach David Blatt, many Cav players thought it was to announce that the team had dealt Love. The former All-Star at times looks like a square peg in the Cleveland offense, leaving many to wonder if he wouldn’t be better off working somewhere else.
On Monday, Cavs general manager David Griffin tried to put a kibosh on such thoughts, via Stephen J. Gaither at Sporting News:
"You'd have to go a long way to convince me that we're a better team winning in the Finals without a player like Kevin on our team," Griffin said Monday in an interview on Cleveland radio station WKNR. "We've never once put together an offer involving Kevin nor have we taken a call on an offer for Kevin."
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"We think very highly of Kevin and we believe Kevin thinks very highly of this situation," Griffin said. "But, I can also tell you that we have been very clear from the beginning that there's no such thing as untouchables. You're either all the way in or all the way out in this process and we believe our guys are all the way in."
Griffin did give himself some wiggle room.
"If it remains that way, then we are going to try and augment the group at the bottom and try to get some additional depth and that's what we'll do,” he said. “We're not going to be afraid to do what needs to be done if something more significant comes along."
Gaither is correct, that is the very definition of “wiggle room.” Still, when you tell the media that a team featuring LeBron freakin’ James doesn’t boast any “untouchables,” you’re basically clearing the floor, here.
Love makes nearly $19.7 million this season, in the first year of a five-year, $113 million contract extension he signed with Cleveland last summer. That’s a lot of money, but the yearly salary could successfully match with myriad other NBA contracts in a deal, and the remaining cash won’t seem like any sort of millstone past this summer, when the NBA’s salary cap rises to around $90 million (and beyond, in 2017).
In an ideal setting for those that love to talk transactions, Love could easily be dealt for another max-making star, or a series of contracts that would fill out Cleveland’s rotation. Once again, the Cavaliers only went eight-deep in its win over Minnesota on Monday, with Mo Williams rounding out the box score at just 5:22 minutes in the contest as the fringe member of the rotation. Seemingly, the team could use help at every reserve position.
Seemingly. Apologies for going Tom Thibodeau on this one, but the Cavs have enough to win. Against everyone.
(OK, maybe not against Golden State.)
(Well.)
Furthermore, it’d be nice to see the guy given the chance to succeed in this environment. The go-to adage that former Cavs coach David Blatt basically treated Love like a glorified Channing Frye isn’t that far off, because for a year and a half stats and game clips will show that Love wasn’t afforded nearly as many opportunities in his comfort zones as was the case in Minnesota.
It would be easier to argue away trading in Love’s comfort for LeBron’s if Cavaliers looked like world-beaters, but too often this team has not played to its capacity. The run to end the 2014-15 regular season is nice, and they’ll easily make it out of the East this May, but nobody can claim that this squad is playing up to potential.
New coach Tyronn Lue, facing that and many other things down, decided to say the right thing upon taking over his new gig:
 | @mcten | |
Tyronn Lue on his conversation with Kevin Love today: "I'm going to use him more at the elbows"
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Then, because Lue is 58-years old (actually, he’s 38; he was drafted the same year as Jason Williams), he decided to say this:
"With our young stars, with Kyrie and Kevin, they're young, so it's still about their brand and different things, it's just way different," Lue said.
So it’s a pop ad’s fault now, I guess.
Branding issues are not the problem with the Cleveland Cavaliers. These aren’t selfish players. LeBron James may take possessions off defensively and run his usual passive/aggressive nonsense, and Irving and Love still have kinks to work out after acting as the best players on terrible teams, but nobody is out to get theirs. Outside of J.R. Smith, of course.
The issue, as it was for the first 190 games of LeBron’s time in Miami, is spacing.
Love doesn’t need to average the 26 points he mustered in Minnesota, nor does every Irving jumper or LeBron finish need to come off the kind hand of his assist. The Cavaliers have yet to create something bigger than the salaries of their working employees, and they need to develop a fluid offensive system that creates surprises in the half court – something less reliant on dashing end to end with LeBron doing the damage in transition.
(A routine that, Lue admits, his players aren’t ready for.)
The trade deadline is in three weeks, and the Cavaliers have too much committed both financially and structurally to make a franchise-altering deal involving Kevin Love. This isn’t like dealing a low-lying first round pick for Timofey Mozgov. Love can act as the tipping point on a 65-win, championship team. His owns myriad gifts. You have to provide him with an environment in which he can create.
The Cavaliers have three special players and a rotation big enough to bring a championship to northern Ohio. It would be rather frustrating to see them screw this up. Again.
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