Kevin Love Blows A Wide-Open Layup Because He’s Bad At Basketball Again

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Let’s just make Kevin Love feel even crappier about himself, shall we? In the second quarter of Cleveland’s win over the Clippers on Thursday night, the above sequence looked like a fun little layup for the embattled Cavs power forward. Nope.

After catching the ball and driving baseline with nary a defender in sight, Love simply missed. That bungled layup combined with Love’s poor showing against the Warriors in their big matchup earlier this week — and, less-so, his last three quarters against San Antonio the week before — means it’s time to start talking about how overrated and incompatible Love’s become for the Cavs. Here’s a player most considered a top-10 performer and possibly the best power forward in the NBA just two years ago, but who is now getting thrown in ESPN’s Trade Machine more than anyone not named Markieff Morris. And it’s not just fans, but basketball analysts wondering what the Cavs can get back for K-Love.

ESPN staff writer Ethan Sherwood Strauss offered his own self-described “hot take” and declared that the Cavs, as presently constructed, had no chance against the Warriors. Strauss is one of the best NBA writers around, and yet one blowout in January was all it took to declare the Cavs done. One January loss and all of a sudden the Cavs, as presently constructed — a codified way of saying someone needs to be traded — aren’t a legitimate threat to the Warriors or even the Spurs — who the Cavs pushed pretty well in San Antonio the week before.

The blown layup we mentioned in the opening isn’t the first time we’ve seen poor Kev miss a wide-open opportunity to score. He was pretty open for a tip-in to beat the Sixers last season during LeBron’s mid-season sabbatical, but his attempt rimmed out, sealing the win for the Sixers.

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Then there was this atrocity against the Wizards earlier that same season.

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People were saying similar things around the time Love was missing the above bunnies. That was a couple months before Love and the Cavs eventually found a flow together in the season’s second half and seemed to be firing on all cylinders before both Kevin and Kyrie went down in the postseason.

And here we are again. It’s not even February and most teams have played a half a season of games. Kevin Love stinks, and is an awful fit in Cleveland. He needs to go, or the Cavs are in trouble, despite their spot at the top of the Eastern Conference standings.

One game. That’s all it took. And yes, it was a statement by the Warriors, the best team in basketball this season. But the Warriors know better than anyone that January statements are just a faint echo in April and May. As do most of the writers talking about how the Cavs are pretty much done. Yet here we are.

Hopefully David Griffin isn’t as short-sighted as some of the intelligent columnists mentioned in this blog post, or things could get pretty interesting over the next couple of weeks leading up to the trade deadline.

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