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Kevin Love was back on the court Thursday, but has not yet been cleared for Game 4.
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"It was great to see Kevin out there," said Cavaliers center Tristan Thompson. "Get a good lather in, get a good sweat in. He looks great."
But that resumption of walk-through activity doesn't yet mean that Love has been cleared to go for Friday's Game 4, according to Cavaliers head coach Tyronn Lue.
"After the workout, it has to take 24 hours, for the NBA protocol," Lue said. "So once he works out today, it takes 24 hours to see him again to see if everything adds up. I'm not sure what goes into it. But now he had a great workout, and now it takes 24 hours to come and reevaluate him."
The return-to-participation criteria in the NBA's concussion policy require players to undergo several steps of increasing exertion. They start by riding a stationary bike, then move up to jogging, then to agility work, and then, finally, to non-contact team drills like the ones Love went through on Thursday.
The player must prove symptom-free after completing one step before being allowed to move on to the next. Once he has successfully moved through the return-to-participation protocol, Cavaliers team physician Dr. Alfred Cianflocco and Dr. Jeffery Kutcher, director of the NBA's concussion program, must discuss his progress before Cianflocco can make the final determination on whether or not he's ready to return to full participation, and can be cleared for game action.
That means the earliest the Cavs will have a verdict one way or the other on Love's status is Friday afternoon ... which means Lue can put off thinking about — or, at least, tell the media he's putting off thinking about — whether he'd move a cleared Love back into the starting lineup, or allow the group that walloped the Warriors in Game 3 to get another spin at the start of Game 4.
"Haven't thought about it yet," Lue said Thursday. "Hopefully, just trying to get Kevin healthy is the most important thing right now."
In the big picture, it definitely is. (As Warriors center Andrew Bogut said Thursday, "You don't mess around with brain injuries.") In the smaller-scope context of this series, though, the decision that Lue says he hasn't thought about, but that he has 100 percent thought about, matters an awful lot. Especially after a Game 3 win in which the Cavs rampaged behind an improved defensive effort, fueled in part by matchup changes spurred by Love's absence, and stellar offensive performances from LeBron James and Kyrie Irving, fueled in part by a shift in shot distribution and plan of attack spurred by Love's absence.
Through the first two games of the Finals, the Cavs' familiar starting lineup — James, Love, Irving, Thompson and J.R. Smith — had been outscored by three points in 32 minutes of floor time. In Game 3, the same core foursome with Jefferson in for Love outscored Golden State by 17 points in 22 minutes, blowing the Warriors' doors off with more fluid movement, more assertive moves with the ball, sharper screen-and-roll play, and better defensive comportment.
While Lue insisted that the Cavs' ratcheted-up level of play and attention to detail "didn't have anything to do with Kevin [not] being on the floor, it's just the way we approached the game," Cleveland did look more organized, more composed, more forceful and better equipped to go toe-to-toe with the Warriors in Game 3 than it did at any point in Oakland. And while Love remains an All-Star-caliber talent capable of knocking down shots, cleaning the glass and making plays for others, Wednesday's result only emboldened those who have argued since before the start of this series that, as valuable as Love is and has been for the Cavs, in this particular matchup against this particular opponent, his best position might be alongside Lue on the bench. According to Jason Lloyd of the Akron Beacon-Journal, who reported Thursday that the Cavaliers are "privately confident that [Love] will be available to play," Love has "to this point" been open to the idea of a reserve role, and it's "likely" that he would come off the bench if cleared for Game 4.
The Cavs, for their part, refused to publicly entertain that line of thinking Thursday, emphasizing instead the importance of getting Love fully healthy and back in the fold.
"Well, I just seen it on his face yesterday when we were all in the locker room, and it was that 'I hate that I'm going through this' moment, 'I feel like I'm letting you guys down' moment, without him actually even saying it," James said. "So before we left the locker room, I know Kyrie embraced him. I did as well, told him, 'Don't worry about it. We've got [you] tonight.'"
"I know he definitely wanted to play, for sure," Irving added. "Looking in his eyes, knowing in his heart, being at the Finals is what we've both dreamt of. Knowing the magnitude of the game and knowing the challenges that we face going into Game 3, we needed a full team effort, and he was there in spirit, and we just knew that we had to take care of business for him, and we did that."
At some point, though, Love will be there not in spirit, but in the flesh. And at some point — perhaps as soon as Friday afternoon — Lue might find himself in the uncomfortable position of telling a $110 million player that he's coming off the bench in the biggest game of his life. If that's what it comes to — if that's what Lue decides will give Cleveland the best chance of leveling the series at two games apiece heading back to Oracle Arena for Game 5 — the Cavs' head coach seems to have a good bead on how he'll handle it.
"I think you just tell the truth," he said. "They might not like it at the time, but I've always learned in this business if you tell the truth, guys understand and they know what the truth is. They might be mad for a second, but they can always get back to understand and realize that's the right thing."
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