News came out yesterday—from Adrian Wojnarowski, who else—that
LeBron James personally reached out to Love.
Still there’s much debate over whether keeping Andrew
Wiggins is a better idea. Though at this
point we only have glimpses of how he will perform against something like NBA
competition, all those signs are good: per NBA.com statistics, he is currently 26th in points per game
in the summer league (trailing Portland’s own C.J. McCollum, who is averaging
20 points a game and is 3rd), and putting up other stats that read more like
Ben McLemore’s, or Alexy Shved's—that is, non-rookies. He has a total field goal percentage of 41%,
and is pulling down 3.5 rebounds a game.
It was clear he had potential to be one of the great players in the
league in a few years, but it is arguable that he will be extremely useful to
the Cavs come this next regular season.
And that is the question that divides both sides on this
issue. The discussion isn’t even yet to the stages where a trade between the
two sides can be discussed rationally.
The two sides don’t even see eye to eye.
Some think it is obvious to keep him, some think it is absolutely obvious
to trade him.
The discussion wouldn’t have ground down into this stalemate,
though, if Love would have been able to show more of his skills in the
playoffs. The biggest knock against Love
is that he is simply an all-star who has never made it there and never
performed for an extended period at that level of play. And the strange phenomenon of Chris Paul, who
has never made it past the first round, isn’t necessarily an accident:
tendencies that help in the regular season, sometimes work against teams in the
post-season, so people don’t like to extrapolate from what they have seen from
Love to what he might be like in the playoffs.
In fact, it may be worse than this. C.J. McCollum wrote eloquently last week (in
a piece we will look more in depth at soon) about just how completely different
the playoffs are from the regular season.
Every possession counts, every mistake is magnified, and what this means
is that everything that was repetitive and able to be perfected in the regular
season, suddenly can’t be repeated.
There are no second chances. And
playing with that in mind makes for something different. So the very things that are impressive about
Kevin Love—his statistics—in this case bizarrely argue against him as a player
on a team with championship aspirations.
But what numbers! Instead of looking at the totals, let’s take a
game from the season: the December 18th game against the Trail Blazers at the Target Center. Per
basketball-reference.com, Love played 40 minutes, had 29 points, 15 rebounds,
and 9 assists. More impressive, he went 4
for 7 from the three point line, had a true shooting percentage of .703, and an
effective field goal percentage of .667.
He had a defensive rebounding percentage of 30%--he scooped up a
whopping 30% of all available defensive rebounds. LaMarcus Aldridge (who gets his fair share of
rebounds on defense) had a 24% defensive rebounding percentage for comparison. Even
more unbelievable: he had a total rebound percentage of 18%--for every five or
so rebounds that the Wolves had the chance of grabbing from the Blazers, the
ball was snagged by Love one of those times.
That’s amazing. But the single
most impressive statistic is that he had more assists and a greater assist
percentage than Ricky Rubio. This is not
a Dwight Howard-like (at least on the Rockets) ball-stopping force in the post. This is a fluid quantity that can find
someone from the post, come up to swing the ball with ease to keep the offense
moving, or fire it in to a cutter almost like a point guard.
It is that passing skill that recommends Love most to the
Cavs, who will most likely have a fluid, motion-filled, flexible offense next
year. David Blatt will probably run something that involves a lot of passing,
and having a player like Love who can not only put the ball in the hoop, but
distribute it when he gets it, is not only a clear advantage over having
someone like Wiggins but simply destroys most of the East in general. The team will have three amazing passers that
can pass from any position on the court in James, Irving, and Love: that is
more than any team in the east except the Bulls and perhaps what remains of the
Heat can likely defend well. Furthermore,
passing is arguably the most translatable skill between the regular season and
the playoffs—as the Spurs showed us last year, so long as you are running your
offense consistently, a player who can thread passes between the hyperactive
arms and hands of NBA defenders in the regular season will likely have a good
chance at doing the same against even the extra defensive pressure that comes
with the playoffs.
In the end, the important thing for the Cavs is that it is
effectively a win-win situation. Either
they keep a very good player, or they get a great one. If they trade Wiggins, they will also
probably have to trade Bennett, rumors say, so that would eat a bit of a hole
in their roster, and lose another potentially good player. But the advantages may be too great.
Regardless of what happens with the trade, however, it is
more indication of the expanded role that James will be taking on the Cavs:
that of taking greater role in the team. James signed his contract with this in mind. James in fact might want to have a
stake in the ownership of the team as a player—something that may well be
possible after the next Collective Bargaining Agreement negotiations. Regardless, he is showing more managerial
prowess than he ever showed in Miami from the get-go: not too long ago the most
effective way LeBron could influence a decision at Miami was to use twitter to
mention a player. The hierarchy is
evident in such a move: management reaches down to deign to use one of LeBron’s
opinions. Now, he seems to be doing the
bidding of the organization itself, working close with Gilbert and the people
calling the shots, using his image and his clout in order to make concrete the
organization’s wishes—but also to guide it in directions that he himself would
like to see taken.
In this respect, his positioning of himself as “the old head,”
as he charmingly put it in his essay explaining his decision, is already paying off. He seems to have stepped into another role
and assumed expanded responsibilities just in signing the dotted line. He appears already more of a community
activist in the area of Northeastern Ohio, than he ever could have appeared in
Miami. This, regardless of what happens
with Love, is excellent news for the organization, and could be a great
development for the NBA in general, in the way teams involve themselves with
the communities around them: having the greatest player in the world so
interested in this dynamic makes all sorts of concrete links between fandom and
athletic success possible. So expect
more news from that front, as James settles back in to Northeast Ohio and the
Cavs continue their preparation for the next season.
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