The Cavs Are Better When Kevin Love Plays, And It’s Sad We Have To Remind Some People

The NBA Playoffs are about matchups. Some extraordinary teams will sometimes struggle in the playoffs against an opponent with a much lower winning percentage in the regular season (think, the first four games of the Thunder-Warriors series this year, or Thunder-Spurs series the round before). Sometimes this is a clash of styles and the underdog is better suited for the playoffs than their higher-seeded opponent (think, the Grit n’ Grind Grizzlies when they’re healthy). Mostly, though, some teams and players just struggle against certain opponents, even if they’re a better team against everyone else.

The problem casual fans struggle with is understanding the pitfalls that arise from making an all-or-nothing generalization based on these specific matchup problems in May or June. Just because a player might struggle against a specific opponent in the postseason, that player is still valuable, especially over the long haul of a regular season and other playoff games. A team that struggles, too, is still good, even if they’re upset or taken advantage of in a particular playoff series. Nowhere is this idea more apparent than the status of Kevin Love as we come up on Game 4 Friday night.

A lot of the detritus out there about Love stems from what’s happened after he sat out Game 3. An inadvertent Harrison Barnes elbow gave him a concussion in Game 2, and so he was ruled out before the Cavs summarily blew out the Warriors in Game 3. And the logical fallacies poured in on Twitter well before the buzzer sounded Wednesday night.

Here’s how it goes. The Warriors blew out the Cavs in the first two games; Kevin Love did not play in Game 3; the Cavs blew out the Warriors in Game 3. Conclusion? The Cavs are better when Kevin Love isn’t in the lineup.

That’s just wrong.

The Cavs have a net rating of 11.9 when he’s on the court in the playoffs this year. When he was off the court in the playoffs, that rating falls to 5.2, and that latter number was bolstered substantially by Cleveland’s performance in Game 3 of the Finals. But the team has given up an astronomical 106.6 points per 100 possessions while Love has been on the court in these playoffs, too, which — for comparison’s sake — would be in the bottom seven over the regular season. That’s bad, but not that bad.

And yes, you can point to how Kevin almost always plays with Kyrie and LeBron, and that his defense is still suspect enough one moron even picked a Warriors sweep in the Finals because of it.

If Love is cleared — we’ll only know when he’s arrived at the arena before Game 4 — reports have him coming off the bench, with Richard Jefferson ostensibly in his place. But Jefferson is not in his place. LeBron is playing the four in Love’s stead, and LeBron is still probably the best player in the world.

Does that make Love “a little bitch” like some have suggested? No, and it’s staggering a professional reporter would use that verbiage when describing a professional athlete (less so: the environment where it occurred). Except, Emily Austen is not alone, except that her crass comment might affect her employment. Go check out what people are saying on Twitter about Love.

https://twitter.com/RadioVendetta/status/740748135006392320

Some smart people have even fast forwarded to this summer where a purported Kevin Love sweepstakes will commence when the Cavs may dangle their power forward as trade bait.

This all comes after substandard play in two games against the greatest regular season team in NBA history playing at home. This is after that same team stormed back from the brink of elimination and inherited all the confidence they seemed to have lost when they were trailing 3-1. This is after the Cavs again earned the top seed in the Conference and again stormed through the East in April and May, this time with Love playing a pivotal role throughout.

The Cavs certainly seem to match up better against the Warriors without Love. On offense, Jefferson can sit in the corner and the paint is clear for Kyrie and LeBron — aside from Tristan Thompson rushing in to deflate a solid Warriors defensive possession with an offensive rebound. But it’s on the other side of the ball where the Warriors feast on Love every chance they get. With LeBron guarding Draymond Green, the Cavs were able to pressure the ball more and didn’t have to worry about Steph or Klay or Andre Iguodala abusing the slow-footed Love on a switch. Some of the switches still weren’t ideal in Game 3, but the Cavs seem more willing to live with that than the alternative.

But come on. The NBA regular season is really long and the playoffs have stretched to an additional two months when you get to this point in the season. This is when writers and analysts make boneheaded proclamations based off a fraction of a sample size.

Is Love a hindrance more than a help against the Warriors? Probably, yeah. Is he a good player who hasn’t yet figured out how to be effective as the tertiary option on offense with LeBron at the helm? Probably, yeah. Is he a subpar defender, who rotates correctly, but just doesn’t have the athleticism to be elite, which is why the Warriors are attacking him every chance they get in this series? Probably, yeah.

Does the internet need to take a nap or something after recoiling with takes following every. single. NBA. playoff. game? Probably, yeah.