Kevin Love has put up another sick season with ridiculous points and rebounds numbers with the Wolves. His recent 30-12 barrage over a 7 game stretch are just stats that you do not see every day.
Here is a guy who will be second team all-NBA (LeBron and Durant will be the 1st team forwards), and he has been an all-star twice in 4 years in the league. But he has never been on a .500 team.
While no one else wants to raise the issue, I will -- looking solely at his NBA career, will Kevin Love always be a loser?
It is extremely rare for a guy to be on the 1st or 2nd team All-NBA team and yet play for a losing team. Guys who are criticized for not being "winners" -- like Wilt, LeBron, Charles, Ewing, either won a title (Wilt) or reached the finals (the other three guys). Even guys like Tracy McGrady and Kevin Garnett, who played on a lot of first-round playoff losers, generally led their teams to 50 wins and a playoff berth. If you go through the history of the league and look at guys rated top 100 all-time, there are very,very few guys who played on losing teams for any extended period of time.
That said, Love has a tiny bit of company in the all-time greats. Pete Maravich's teams were not very good and rarely above .500. Nate Archibald put in 4 great early years in Cincinnati and KC-Omaha (including a 30-11 year where he became the last man to lead the league in scoring and assists in the same year).
Nate's career stalled and he ended up kicking around for a couple years until finding a home in Boston with Larry Bird's Celtics.
Maravich found success on Utah, on an individual level, but his teams still never were very good.
Amazingly, that is about it. Iverson had some blip years, Reggie Miller, Tim Hardaway had some blip years, but generally their teams were very good. Alex English had a rough patch, but he made the playoffs early on and eventually later on every year.
So, why can't Kevin Love's teams win despite his ridiculous numbers? What does he lack that virtually every other great all-NBA player has displayed?
Here are some general thoughts about Love weaknesses:
1) Teams do not game plan for Kevin Love -- generally when you play against a great player you really need to design your defense around stopping that great player. This rarely happens with Kevin Love. Teams do not double him. Teams do not try to aggressively work him when he is on defense. In fact, there seems to be an odd "gentleman's agreement" among teams that they will allow Love to get his numbers and allow the Wolves to lose.
When Rubio was healthy, teams were obviously game planning for Rubio. They were very worried about Ricky and went to the trouble of putting small forwards and big guards on him.
2) Kevin Love does not make his teammates better. It is very rare that a great player has a terrible assist to turnover ratio. I am sure that there are examples (Kevin Durant, Reggie Miller) of guys who are not great assist men, but it is very, very rare for a guy to be a great player and have a career assist average of 1.9 assists per game. Love is an "end of the play" guy -- when he gets the ball, he should shoot it, because he cannot dribble, create his own shot, or pass very effectively.
Kevin Love's most similar great player from a stats standpoint? Moses Malone.
So wait, Moses was super awesome and his teams generally made the playoffs, even though he was a medicore shotblocker and poor assist man. What is the difference?
3) Kevin Love Is a Very Limited Defender -- Moses Malone twice was on the all-defensive team. He was a sub-par shot blocker FOR HIS SIZE, but he would get between 2.4 and 3.1 steals+blocks per game. Love this year is at 0.9 steals and 0.4 blocks. This is for a guy who plays 39 minutes a game. No player 6'9" or above has ever played 39 minutes a game and averaged less than 1 steal and less than .5 blocks. It is very rare for a player to be allowed to play 39 minutes a game AT ANY SIZE when he is contributing so little in the steals and blocks categories.
Here is a guy who will be second team all-NBA (LeBron and Durant will be the 1st team forwards), and he has been an all-star twice in 4 years in the league. But he has never been on a .500 team.
While no one else wants to raise the issue, I will -- looking solely at his NBA career, will Kevin Love always be a loser?
It is extremely rare for a guy to be on the 1st or 2nd team All-NBA team and yet play for a losing team. Guys who are criticized for not being "winners" -- like Wilt, LeBron, Charles, Ewing, either won a title (Wilt) or reached the finals (the other three guys). Even guys like Tracy McGrady and Kevin Garnett, who played on a lot of first-round playoff losers, generally led their teams to 50 wins and a playoff berth. If you go through the history of the league and look at guys rated top 100 all-time, there are very,very few guys who played on losing teams for any extended period of time.
That said, Love has a tiny bit of company in the all-time greats. Pete Maravich's teams were not very good and rarely above .500. Nate Archibald put in 4 great early years in Cincinnati and KC-Omaha (including a 30-11 year where he became the last man to lead the league in scoring and assists in the same year).
Nate's career stalled and he ended up kicking around for a couple years until finding a home in Boston with Larry Bird's Celtics.
Maravich found success on Utah, on an individual level, but his teams still never were very good.
Amazingly, that is about it. Iverson had some blip years, Reggie Miller, Tim Hardaway had some blip years, but generally their teams were very good. Alex English had a rough patch, but he made the playoffs early on and eventually later on every year.
So, why can't Kevin Love's teams win despite his ridiculous numbers? What does he lack that virtually every other great all-NBA player has displayed?
Here are some general thoughts about Love weaknesses:
1) Teams do not game plan for Kevin Love -- generally when you play against a great player you really need to design your defense around stopping that great player. This rarely happens with Kevin Love. Teams do not double him. Teams do not try to aggressively work him when he is on defense. In fact, there seems to be an odd "gentleman's agreement" among teams that they will allow Love to get his numbers and allow the Wolves to lose.
When Rubio was healthy, teams were obviously game planning for Rubio. They were very worried about Ricky and went to the trouble of putting small forwards and big guards on him.
2) Kevin Love does not make his teammates better. It is very rare that a great player has a terrible assist to turnover ratio. I am sure that there are examples (Kevin Durant, Reggie Miller) of guys who are not great assist men, but it is very, very rare for a guy to be a great player and have a career assist average of 1.9 assists per game. Love is an "end of the play" guy -- when he gets the ball, he should shoot it, because he cannot dribble, create his own shot, or pass very effectively.
Kevin Love's most similar great player from a stats standpoint? Moses Malone.
So wait, Moses was super awesome and his teams generally made the playoffs, even though he was a medicore shotblocker and poor assist man. What is the difference?
3) Kevin Love Is a Very Limited Defender -- Moses Malone twice was on the all-defensive team. He was a sub-par shot blocker FOR HIS SIZE, but he would get between 2.4 and 3.1 steals+blocks per game. Love this year is at 0.9 steals and 0.4 blocks. This is for a guy who plays 39 minutes a game. No player 6'9" or above has ever played 39 minutes a game and averaged less than 1 steal and less than .5 blocks. It is very rare for a player to be allowed to play 39 minutes a game AT ANY SIZE when he is contributing so little in the steals and blocks categories.
When you are a poor ballhandler and not a good passer and do not force a double team, it would really, really help your team's chances of success if you would not be getting a level of steals+blocks equal to Reggie Miller or Richard Jefferson or Glen Rice or Mike Miller.
Defenders of Love will point to his improved 102 defensive rating. I will point to the fact that every Sacramento King who went into the lane last night was easily able to lay the ball in over Love any time they wanted.
A general trait of a great player is that they tend to intimidate their opponents. Opponents throw up their hands in dismay and tend to quit mentally. When Shawn Marion used to drive the lane against a young Kevin Garnett, he would throw the ball wildly off the top of the backboard or across the rim. He was afraid. LeBron makes people afraid. Duncan as a young man was so huge and powerful on both ends that guys just tended to bounce off him. Iverson was ridiculously quick. McGrady was a huge, huge guard. Shaq was Shaq.
Kevin Love is about 6'7 1/2". He is a power forward who cannot play small forward and can get only minimal run against a legit center. He is highly skilled as a shooter and works extremely hard on rebounding. Yet great skilled players with less athletic talent tend to have the ability to set up teammates (Bird, Stockton). Love, evidently, does not.
The most difficult player to compare to Love (when wondering why Love cannot win more) is Dirk. Dirk has always won. Dirk's stats are certainly not much better than Love's (early in his career Dirk was a 2.5 steals+blocks guy, but he isn't any more).
Dirk has always had Nash and Kidd to play off. Perhaps if Rubio can rehab quickly we can see the Wolves become a 2 man gang like Nash and Dirk early on. But Dirk was the key cog star on teams in Dallas who were going like 58-24. Even before Rubio was hurt, the Wolves were not seeing winning percentages like that.
My Theory:
Love is a very limited player. What he does well, he does extremely well. But he is not a Kevin Garnett or LeBron James who can take a shitty club and make it rise from the ashes all by himself. Blake Griffin, for example, has a big athletic center to make up for his defensive indifference. Griffin now has Chris Paul to control the ball and win games.
When Christian Laettner was at Duke, he was an excellent offensive player and an above average rebounder. yet he had Hurley to handle the ball and Grant Hill to do everything else (defend, get loose balls, block shots, get steals). Love, similarly, needs guys around him to do the things he cannot -- he needs a big shotblocking center, Rubio, and an athletic guy like a young Tayshaun Prince. Sadly, at the current time, he has none of these guys healthy.
Will Love always be an NBA loser? One would hope not. He may follow the career path of Nate Archibald -- finding a winning team where he can be just a cog. Perhaps the better question is can Kevin Love be the primary star of a 50-win team. To date, the answer to that question appears to be a decided no. He isn't going to get taller, or slimmer, or more athletic, or play harder, or become a better shooter, so his sole upside is to be a better ballhandler and passer. I am not sure he can do that.
My guess -- Love will never be the star of a 50 win NBA club. Either the Wolves will get enough talent around him that he can be the 2nd or 3rd guy, or he will end up on an established playoff team, possibly a championship team, somewhere else, in a lesser role.
HM
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