Let’s take you back to a time where Kevin Love still had a healthy left hand and the Cleveland Cavaliers were looking for something to spark a defensively-weary franchise bogged down by trade rumors.
Consider, if you will, a world where Blake Griffin is still on the Los Angeles Clippers, a franchise that wanted him to be a Clipper for life before it abruptly hit the hard reset on his big contract and a fleeting opportunity to (maybe) land LeBron James in free agency. A place where Detroit has been turned down by L.A. and is still in search of a star player ahead of the trade deadline.
That world isn’t too far in the past — about two days ago at the time of writing this — but a lot has happened since the possibility that the Detroit Pistons could have tried to deal for Kevin Love. That’s a rumor that’s news to many and rendered obsolete in a reality where Blake Griffin is a Piston and Love is out of the All-Star game and on the mend for at least a month and possibly more.
Sports Illustrated’s Jake Fischer chronicled the journey the Pistons took in dealing for a franchise forward in a piece that details some of the targets the team had determined would be worthy of moving Griffin in the first place. The list is pretty long, but one detail hidden in the piece is that if the deal with the Clippers had fallen through, Cleveland would have been the next team Detroit would have tried in their quest for a star forward.
For Detroit, the deal needed to be consummated well in advance of the trade deadline. Including Tuesday night’s win over the Cleveland Cavaliers, eight of the team’s nine games before the All-Star break are at home. “It’s time to make a run now,” said one team source. If the Pistons failed to close on Griffin, Detroit was prepared to turn its attention to Kevin Love.
Had that happened, it wouldn’t have been the first time Love was involved in a trade rumor, if not serious talks, and it’s certainly intriguing to think whether Cleveland would’ve been open to a similar package the Clippers took for Griffin to try and fix what is currently a broken puzzle in Cleveland.
But none of that matters now, I suppose. Love has a broken hand once more, and Griffin is part of a hopeful “new empire” in Detroit.
