Love’s Time Here = Sacrifice

We discussed the Cavaliers’ decision to let Kevin Love go previously and wanted to take the time today to discuss his tenure with the wine and gold.

By now everyone knows Love has signed with the Miami Heat, meaning he is also taking his talents to South Beach, only he didn’t have a primetime special to announce it.

The Cavs have a back-to-back coming up in a couple of weeks (March 8th and 10th) in Miami, and hopefully Love doesn’t play a factor if Cleveland loses either of the two contests.

Time really flies because Love has been with the Cavaliers for nine seasons. It just seems hard to believe.

We would maintain no player ever sacrificed more than Kevin Love. We aren’t talking about money here, because as we all know, Love was paid very handsomely to stay in Cleveland after LeBron James and Kyrie Irving departed. No, we are discussing how he sacrificed his stats in order to win.

When Love arrived in town, he was coming off a 2nd team All-NBA season with Minnesota in which he averaged 25.9 points and 12.4 rebounds per game. He averaged 18.3 shots, and the previous three years with the Timberwolves, got between 17.4 and 18.3 shots with them.

He was also 2nd team All-NBA in 2011-12. Since Irving was 3rd team All-NBA in 2014-15, people should realize Love, not Irving, was the more accomplished player when the deal was made to send the first overall pick in Andrew Wiggins and Anthony Bennett to the Wolves for Love.

Love had to make the difficult transition from being the best player on a mediocre team, the Wolves were 40-42 in his last season up north, to being the second or third option on a team with title aspirations. His shots per game dropped to 13.5 per game with the Cavaliers.

There were some adjustments for Love and we all remember the “fit in” of “fit out” comments by James in Love’s first year in town. But in the end, it worked out with four straight Finals appearances.

His minutes also dropped. Some of that was due to the Cavs blowing teams out and some was due to nagging injuries, but he was playing 36 minutes with Minnesota, and his high with Cleveland was his first season here at 33.8 minutes.

Ultimately, Love did make two all-star games with the Cavs, bringing his career total to five. They were in the last two years of “the LeBron era”, 2016-17 and 2017-18 when he 19.0 points (his Cavalier high) and 11.1 boards, and 17.6 and 9.3 respectively.

After he signed the extension to remain here, injuries became more prevalent, and he played just 22 games in the first year after James signed in LA, but he did play 56 of the 65 games in the pandemic season of 2019-20, scoring 17.6 points and getting 9.8 rebounds per game.

Last season, he remade himself as a sixth man, the leader of the second unit, playing in 74 games and scoring 13.6 points as well as grabbing 7.2 caroms in just 22.5 minutes a night. The reduced minutes kept him healthier and he was a key part of a resurgence for the franchise, with their first year over the .500 mark since they went to four straight NBA Finals.

If you want to remember Kevin Love as a Cavalier, remember he was the ultimate teammate. He did the things, the “little things” teams need to be done in order to be successful. He probably could have continued to put up huge numbers, but he wanted to win.

And he was a huge part of putting the only championship banner for the franchise in 2016.

Thank you and fans here will always be appreciative.

Lost Season With Brown Hurting Cavs Now

New Cavaliers’ GM David Griffin has a very difficult job. We aren’t talking about how his boss seems to want to be involved in the basketball operations, including trying to hire a coach behind his back.

His real problem is evaluating the talent on this team after last season.

We really believe that you have to throw away the seasons that some of the players who have been on the roster for more than two years, particularly Kyrie Irving and Tristan Thompson.

You also have to discard any evaluation of last year’s first round draft pick, Anthony Bennett.

Irving and Thompson weren’t helped by Mike Brown’s coaching and it was obvious to everyone that the point guard didn’t trust his coach, and it affected his attitude.

That’s why talking about moving Irving is premature, unless he doesn’t sign a contract extension with the wine and gold.

We feel that Irving’s attitude will be much better with a new coaching staff this season. Thompson also leveled out under Brown’s tutelage.

What happens when a coach puts together sets and plays that don’t work, the players lose confidence in him. We all saw the difficulty the Cavs had last season with in bounds plays and plays at the end of games.

It’s easy to see why players like the two third-year players tuned out the head coach, and because of that, it is difficult for Griffin to evaluate both players going forward.

As for Bennett, yes he came to training camp out of shape due to off-season shoulder surgery, but since Brown found little time for Bennett to play, and when he did, he was put into schemes that didn’t put him into situations where he could succeed.

So, that’s three players that the new GM really can’t get a good read on. And he also doesn’t have a good gage on whether or not Dion Waiters can play with Irving because of last year’s coaching staff.

Tyler Zeller? Who knows? Brown hardly played him last season.

Outside of Waiters, what player who was here in 2012-13 made any progress in their game? You can’t name any. That’s why it is a difficult job for Griffin.

He does have to hire a coach soon, if only to get the new headman’s opinion on possible moves in free agency and in the draft. Whatever personnel moves they are considering, isn’t it better to find out what the guy who will be dealing with the players on a day in, day out basis is thinking?

We would support the hiring of either David Blatt or Lionel Hollins, who hasn’t received a second interview as of yet.

Blatt appears to be a true coach, a teacher, someone who will put players in a system that will take advantage of their abilities. That’s what this group needs. If his stuff works, the players will have confidence in him and play for him. That’s how it works.

As for Hollins, he would bring an attitude of winning. He would make it clear that losing is no longer tolerated. That change in culture is also needed. In the past few years, winning hasn’t been the first priority for the Cavs.

To be sure, Griffin didn’t take the gig because he thought it would be easy, he obviously loves a challenge.

However, what happened last year probably set the franchise back a year in the rebuilding effort. That’s something he has to overcome.

GM Grant Needs to Add Shooter

The Cleveland Cavaliers are a struggling basketball team.

They’ve had four draft picks in the top four of the draft over the last three years. They’ve hired a new coach. They’ve taken some chance on the free agent market.

Yet, to date, the result is the same. They continue to struggle and right now they are sitting at 10-21 on the season, and are on pace to win 27 games, a mere three more than last season, a record that got their coach, Byron Scott, fired.

That would seem to put the onus squarely on the shoulders of GM Chris Grant.

Grant has brought in some talented players, with the prime example being Kyrie Irving, the first overall pick in 2011, won the NBA Rookie of the Year, and has made an all-star team.

Outside of this year’s first overall pick, Anthony Bennett, the other two players who were selected in the top four of the draft were power forward Tristan Thompson, a solid player in the league and Dion Waiters, who has shown ability since entering the league last year.

So, Grant hasn’t taken any stiffs, with the disclaimer that it is still way too early to make any judgment on Bennett, who’s only 31 games into his rookie season.

Still, it seems that the GM hasn’t put together a basketball “team”, meaning the mix of talent hasn’t been working.

While we have supported Grant’s talent evaluation in the past, we did so thinking he would convert the duplicate talent he has at certain positions and convert them where the team’s weaknesses are.

The wine and gold have a plethora of power forwards in Thompson, Anderson Varejao, Earl Clark, and Bennett and a bounty of point guard types in Irving, Waiters, and Jarrett Jack.

This forces Mike Brown to have to play two power forwards and two point guards for much of the game. That’s not a good mix offensively and defensively.

What the Cavaliers do not have are shooters. Sure, Irving won the three point shooting contest last season, but he’s more of a penetrating guard than a pure shooter.

The odd thing is, these types of guys should be fairly easy to obtain, a lot of them bounce around the league like Kyle Korver and J.J. Redick.

That’s what is lacking with the Cavs right now. They don’t have a lot of guys who can put the ball in the basket from outside.

So when Irving and Waiters get into the lane with dribble penetration, they don’t have options to kick it out to, which makes the defense protect the basket all the more, making it tougher for those guys to score.

The extra power forwards aren’t as critical because Brown can use them, along with Tyler Zeller at center to alleviate some of the logjam, but the imbalance in the backcourt and at the small forward spot isn’t providing a winning mix.

On New Year’s Eve, the Cavs played the Indiana Pacers even for three quarters, but simply couldn’t make shots in the fourth quarter, being held to eight points for most of the quarter.

When a guard did get into the paint, there was the overwhelming presence of Roy Hibbert, and when the ball got kicked outside, they don’t have a reliable shooter.

If anything is to be salvaged this season, Grant has to act quickly. As it stands, the wine and gold can still make the playoffs despite their mediocre record.

In basketball, pure talent isn’t the only determining factor. You have to have the right mix and the Cavaliers don’t.

It’s on Chris Grant to make the correct moves and balance out his roster. And he needs to do it sooner than later.

Cavs’ Parts May Not Fit

Since the holiday season is upon on, it seems appropriate to refer to the roster of the Cleveland Cavaliers as the island of misfit toys.

This isn’t to denigrate the talent of some of the players, and really, it is not to rip on GM Chris Grant for his selections in the draft.

Grant’s job is to draft the most talented player available when it is his turn to pick. So, if he thought Anthony Bennett was the best player last summer (and it is way too early to judge otherwise) then you have to take him.

The problem with the roster is it is too heavy in some areas and it needs help in others. Our thought was that Grant could deal from strength to shore up the weaknesses, and he may do that in time, but he can’t wait much longer.

Let’s look at the power forward position. Currently, the wine and gold have four players that are primarily “fours”: Tristan Thompson, Anderson Varejao, Earl Clark, and Bennett.

Mike Brown tries to alleviate the problem by playing Varejao at center and Clark at small forward, but they give up a lot (Varejao—size, Clark-quickness) at those spots.

Most NBA teams use two power forwards on the roster, so right now, there is an overload there.

At the small forward, the Cavs have Alonzo Gee, a defensive specialist, and they can play swingman C. J. Miles there as well, although in limited minutes.

Gee doesn’t shoot well enough to be considered a problem for the player assigned to guard him, and Miles doesn’t have the size to be able to guard the elite small forwards of the league, although he is the one Cleveland player who has knocked down open shots thus far.

In the backcourt, the Cavaliers have the centerpiece of the current roster, point guard Kyrie Irving. Irving can score and set up teammates, and if he has a weakness, it’s that he loves his dribble.

It would be one thing if he were moving with the dribble, but more often than not, he’s at the top of the key bouncing the ball and going nowhere.

That could be because of the simplistic offense the coaching staff runs.

The other players who get time in the backcourt (along with Miles) are Dion Waiters and Jarrett Jack, both combo guards rather than true off guards. This means both are more effective with the ball in their hands.

However, the coaching staff probably wants the ball in Irving’s hands.

You could have plays where the ball starts in Waiters or Jack’s hands and they set up Irving, but you would have to have something set up for that, and right now that doesn’t look to be the case.

So, the three-headed backcourt doesn’t seem to fit well together right now.

So, the pressure is on Grant to convert his superfluous parts into ones that can help this basketball team win and win now, because although there is talent on the roster, it doesn’t fit together.

There are too many players who have similar games, which is fine if they play at different times, but when you have to play Waiters and Jack at the same time or have Thompson and Varejao on the floor at the same time, it’s a problem.

If this team is going to start winning, this roster may have to be fixed. Grant has to make some moves to get this team to start putting games in the win column.