The Reimagining Of Kevin Love

Father time, they say, is undefeated. But you can at least negotiate with him.

In what will indisputably be the latter stages of his career, Cleveland Cavaliers big man Kevin Love is holding back the inevitable. As the hair greys and the team around him transforms, he remains the mainstay, the lone holdover from the championship era, the bridge to the past. And he also remains very good.

With the explosive athleticism of his youth gone long before even the title-winning season of 2015-16, Love has in the second half of his career proffered a ground-bound game, something which has helped him to age particularly gracefully. He is no passenger on the resurgent Cavaliers. He is instead the vital sixth man on a team that is otherwise lacking contributions from its bench.

Aged 34 and into his fifteenth NBA season, Love is averaging 10.6 points, 7.2 rebounds and 2.5 assists in only 20.7 minutes per game, and while the 41,8% basic shooting percentage does not flatter a stocky 6’8 big man on the surface, it is overwhelmed by the 40.4% three-point shooting and the resultant .613 true shooting percentage. That number is the tiniest possible fraction short of his career-high .614% mark set back in 2017/18, and a significant amount ahead of the league-wide average of .574%.

Even as both the mobility to chase those landing outside of his area and the athleticism to somehow fight over and through traffic to get them have slowly evaporated, the rebounding instincts that saw Love once lead the league in that category are still there. As he has aged and become almost exclusively an away-from-the-basket type on offence, the offensive rebounding rate has inevitably dwindled away to nearly nothing, yet the defensive rebounding rate of 35.5% is on pace to better any mark he has previously set in any full season of his career. As well as finishing possessions with the shot, Love is also winning them on the glass, and facilitating them with his fundamentally sound passing.

It is true that, without offering rim protection, Love can and does focus on the rebounding. Yet it is not just what Kevin Love is doing, but how he is doing it, and who with.

Alongside the non-outside shooting Jarrett Allen and the only-occasional outside shooting of Evan Mobley, the Cavaliers need a floor-spacing big if they are to play so much as a four-out line-up. Love – alongside the ever-developing contributions of third-year forward Dean Wade – provides that, and although long famed for his outlet passing (something which the Cavaliers, who play at the league’s second-slowest pace, could perhaps utilise more), his entry passing to those two is just as good.

Similarly, the length, athleticism and positioning of those two can cover for Love on the other end. The duo seek to pursue the ball and swat it into the car park at every opportunity, and the way they gravitate to the basket on both ends entirely suits the game of Love, who at this stage of his career would rather not. Love provides the counter-balance, the perimeter to the interior, the old to the young, the measured to the exuberant, the learned to the learning, the sage to the dynamic. And the fact that Mobley and Allen are both extremely good players is what makes the partnerships work.

The above praise has largely skirted over the issue of Love’s defence. However, it is not something that can be ignored in this way. Aside from the defensive rebounding, and occasional praise over his footwork notwithstanding, Love is in several ways a non-factor on that end, and is targeted by opponents accordingly. It is not that he does not try; it is instead that he does not succeed.

In not offering any defensive verticality, length, deflections, close-out speed or lateral movement, there is no such thing as a favourable match-up on that end for Love, who the Cavaliers have to try and hide just as much as opponents try to seek him. Cavaliers line-ups with Love in get a healthy offensive balance, yet it comes at the expense of everything on defence becoming that much harder for everybody else. This is not for nothing, and it is not something easily captured statistically.

Hardiness also remains a concern. Love did appear in 74 games last season, yet this was his first time playing in more than 60 since the 2015-16 title season, and he managed only 47 games combined across 2018-19 and 2020-21. Much as Love is reliable on the court – you know both what are you are and what you aren’t getting from him – his presence on the thing is less consistent.

Nevertheless, it has been quite the reputational transformation for Love, a man who 18 months ago was thought to represent everything wrong with the Cavs. At that time, Love still had more than two seasons to go on the oversized extension he had signed back in 2018, yet managed only 25 appearances as his Cavaliers team loafed to a 22-50 record with the league’s worst offense. Disjointed by the pandemic, misshapen in their construction and not going anywhere any time soon, Love was a hangover rather than a bridge.

In contrast, he now represents everything that is right. The role of being the offensive-minded veteran off the bench on a team with great rim protection is perfect for him, and on a fun Cavaliers roster with both immediate-term success and long-term upside, Love has an important role to fill. Where only recently he was defined by his absence, he is now notable by it. And where once he was an expensive and surplus burden, he is needed now.