While Kevin Love sits on the sidelines and watches his teammates fight against all odds in the 2015 NBA Finals, it appears that Love has his sights already set on the 2015-16 season. Love has stated that he wants to be back with the Cavs next season and the NBA Finals have reinvigorated his fire to go back to the NBA Finals next year with this team but with him playing in the games.
LeBron James has to do it all for the Cavaliers right now and while he’s been able to win a game in the NBA Finals doing it all for his team, obviously James does need some help. Both Kyrie Irving going down with his injury and Love going down during the playoffs have put the Cavs in an almost impossible situation. People doubt the team but LeBron has been able to pull through, sparking conversation if the Cavs even need Kevin Love going forward. It appears that the Cleveland Cavaliers want to bring back Love to keep the current ‘Big 3’ they have with LeBron James, Kyrie Irving and Kevin Love. Even despite the stellar play of other big men on the Cavs in the playoffs, like Timofey Mozgov and Tristan Thompson.
Following from Zach Lowe’s piece on the next step for Kevin Love’s career.
Griffin insists the Cavs want Love back, and Cleveland walloped opponents by 15 points per 100 possessions when Love, LeBron, and Thompson shared the floor, per NBA.com. Thompson has stepped up his rim protection in the playoffs, indicating he might be able to play bigger than his height. The Cavs will need more punch over a full season; the ground-and-pound style they improvised in the playoffs may not be sustainable.
“This new identity has worked for us because of the matchups we’ve had,” Griffin says. “But we were the best team in the league with the Big Three healthy. We want to be that juggernaut again. We want to be a more talented version of this group of gritty overachievers.”
Cleveland’s interest in Love predated LeBron, anyway. The Cavs and Wolves had been discussing potential Love trades for two years before they finally struck a deal. Cleveland never had anything that tempted Minnesota, and when it finally landed the best possible trade chip — the no. 1 pick — it wasn’t interested in dealing it. It was only when LeBron returned that Griffin decided to go all in. “You have a finite window when you’re dealing with a player that’s 30,” Griffin says of LeBron. “The organization had wanted Kevin for a while, but we paid the price we paid entirely because of LeBron’s presence.”
Dealing Wiggins, a potential superstar on a cheapo rookie deal, was painful, especially since there was no way to lock Love in long-term as part of the trade. “Kevin was sort of approving the trade, the way it all works,” Cavaliers owner Dan Gilbert says. “That’s maybe not technically true, but we’re interviewing him and making sure. We’re a young team, we got Wiggins, and we are thinking about a trade for a guy who may not be here after a year.”
No Love, no Kyrie, no problem for LeBron James. The thing is, he can’t do this all the time, especially as he gets older. That was part of the reason he joined this team. The young guys can make things happen for him when he needs it to happen. He even took time off during this season and came back to a team who managed to somehow stay afloat and be at around a .500 mark.
Love and Kyrie going forward with LeBron makes sense. As much as their games might not work sometimes, it still does manage to work with the proper gameplan. Kyrie won’t be slinging the ball around and getting 10 assists and Kevin Love isn’t the type of guy to post up on a consistent basis, his game allows him to move everywhere from the paint all the way out to the three-point line.
LeBron is the happy medium. He can do it all and fills in to cover up the deficiencies of his counterparts. as the summer continues to get hotter, the rumors of Love leaving Cleveland might just get colder and he will just end up staying after almost a year long debate on his next stop before the first one even ended.
