Link to the Present: Countdown to Love Edition
2014-08-11
Kevin Love is coming to Cleveland and is going to sign a five year deal for $120 million after he is traded on August 23rd. Adrian Wojnarowski reported this Thursday, and, almost immediately, Cleveland’s bad luck came to darken the report. There is a slight possibility the trade will be vetoed by the NBA.
Mark Stein and Brian Windhorst discussed this possibility as soon as the Love trade was announced.
On Thursday, Yahoo! Sports reported that the Cavs and Wolves have agreed to a trade in principle and that Love has an agreement to re-sign with the Cavs next summer for five years, $120 million after opting out of his contract.
But sources insist that no agreement for Love to sign an extension in Cleveland next summer — when he can become a free agent — is in place.
In addition, under NBA rules, such an agreement would be illegal, and, if proven, it potentially could be grounds for the league to block this trade and dole out punishment to both teams.
It’s terrifying to think about this trade being blocked because it would be just one more blight in Cleveland Sports history. A trade veto does seem unlikely because the Cavs front office doesn’t seem incompetent enough to mess this type of thing up, and LeBron James holds a lot of sway over the NBA. I doubt Adam Silver would damage his relationship with James to stop this trade.
Vetoing the trade may even harm Silver’s relationship with Cavs rookie Andrew Wiggins. Wiggins has told his former Kansas coach, Bill Self, he wants to be traded to
the Timberwolves. Wiggins has it in his head that having to be the star of the team right away is going to help him grow as a player and become more dominant over time. Wiggins seems delusional for thinking that not playing with LeBron James is going to help his career, and he has to know deep down in his basketball mind that playing with LeBron is the best experience of any player’s career.
Wiggins may even miss the opportunity to play with Ray Allen if the trade to Minnesota goes through. Allen has indicated privately he will play next year rather than retiring.
While the Cleveland Cavaliers are the frontrunner for Allen, the source said the 10-time All-Star has not completely decided where he will play. Cleveland is the favorite due to the return of LeBron James, with whom Allen played with on the Miami Heat the past two seasons.
Even though the Love trade isn’t a total lock to happen, people are already breaking down his game even more in depth than usual. Bill Simmons reached the conclusion that Love is underrated after comparing him to Charles Barkley and other great forwards.
Fact: Love made the All-NBA second team in 2012 and 2014.
Rebuttal: And in 2014, he made history by becoming the first player since the ABA-NBA merger in 1976 to receive top-10 recognition twice without (a) making the playoffs in those seasons, and (b) EVER making the playoffs.
Simmons made some predictions about Love that are the things Clevelanders dream about at night and rant about at the bar after work.
I see Cleveland playing Love as a small-ball 5 much like Coach K did.
I see David Blatt pushing them to run and run and run some more.
I see Love’s extraordinary outlet passes being celebrated around the globe.
I see him becoming a legitimate threat to be a 22-15-5 guy and maybe even average 16 boards a game (which hasn’t happened since Rodman).
Jacob Rosen has a statistical analysis of Kevin Love running at Waiting For Next Year. Some numbers stood out more than others. Everyone knows he is a transcendent scorer, but he excels at passing too.
Finally, he upped his passing last year over my usual 20 percent assist
rate demarcation line for big man distributors. He was only at 10.5 percent entering last season, then jumped all the way to 21.4 percent in 2013-14. He’s gained a notorious reputation for his crazy full-court transition passes, especially to his athletic teammate Corey Brewer. This is a really impressive development that makes him one of the most potent offensive talents in the league.
His individual defense isn’t as bad as is commonly thought.
Love never committed fouls and racked up the boards. Did he disengage too often? When he actually engaged in individual one-on-one defense, his stats weren’t too terrible, per mySynergySports. Opponents scored only 0.65 points per isolation possession against Love in 2011-12 and 0.77 last year. On post-ups, 0.69 and 0.72 in those two seasons.
Love really knows how to get helped out on the offensive end of the floor.
Love then is a unique 26-point scorer. He was assisted on a higher percentage of two-point makes than the league average (57.2% v. 51.8%). That was also slightly the case with his three-point makes (85.8% v. 83.7%). And because he had such a high ratio of three-point shots, he was assisted on a very high rate of his buckets overall compared to the average (65.5% v. 58.3%).
The man is going to know where to be for easy passes from Kyrie Irving and James, and he will love getting super easy baskets.
Here are some plays the team will be running with the new superstar trio.
My conclusion after watching the video is that Mike Miller and other geriatric players will love playing on this team.
There will be so many open threes that involve jogging, not even full on sprinting, to the proper position.
Cleveland Jackson of Stepien Rules breaks down the Kevin Love trade and ends by ranking the worst Cavs trades of all time. Jackson wants Wiggins to stay.
4. FOURTH WORST TRADE (SPECULATIVELY): This is where I would put trading Andrew Wiggins, plus whatever picks and players would have to be included, for a single year of Kevin Love. I’m not going to try and read Love’s mind and determine what he would or will do at the end of this season in a scenario where he is traded without a commitment that he will stay with the Cavaliers or any kind of contractual extension. I am saying that the trade for Love put the Cavaliers in a position where they could be making a historically bad trade if they give up a number one overall pick with superstar potential for one player to be on the team for one year.
Everyone needs to hope that Kevin Love and the Cavs already completed a secret just barely legal handshake subverting the spirit of the CBA. Being a Cavs fan just got a little morally complex.
It really bugs me how often people cherry-pick stats about Love’s defense and say, “he’s not that bad!” He defends well in one-on-one/post-ups and he rebounds well. But other than that he’s pretty bad! Love is bottom 11 for big men at blocking shots per 48min. Not bottom 11%, bottom 11, as in- there’s only 10 big guys in the entire NBA worse at blocking shots. He allows one of the highest FG% in the paint for a big man. He’s bottom 1/3rd in the league at PNR defense. I obviously hope he improves and hope that our system covers… Read more »
While I think it’s possible silver blows it up or love leaves, I think it is unlikely. I can’t deny Nate and his “black swan”possibility. To ignore the risk is similar to stock market or Las Vegas style hubris. The market can stay irrational far longer than fans are willing to admit.
The cavs and wolves both want this. Their insider knowledge is of little comfort until the ink is dry. we don’t really know. It is a gamble. Anything less than that is wishful thinking.
I haven’t really heard the national media ( only locally so far ) discuss the possibility of the trade being blocked —-let’s play ” devil advocate ” and say for some unforeseen reason the trade is blocked —how do the dynamics of the team change—-what are LeBron’s feelings—-still excited about being here and the teammates that he is playing with—still going to be here until he retires/ not going anywhere—-what about wiggins ( especially wiggins ) what are his feelings – after -being treated like a ping- pong ball since draft day / LeBron not really extending welcome to the… Read more »
Cavs signed a Center: http://www.foxsports.com/ohio/story/cleveland-cavaliers-sign-free-agent-center-alex-kirk-lebron-james-kevin-love-081114
Kirk was on the Summer League team. Guess nothing else panned out so far.
The idea that Love or Leb will leave Cleveland after this year is ludicrous and should not be taken seriously. The Cavs would not have made this trade if they didn’t know he was going to be here for 4-5 years.
Not ludicrous, but still quite unlikely. It is incredibly frustrating when writers like Jackson say one year though. As Bosh showed this offseason, being able to guarantee that extra 20M or so is a not-insignificant factor.
It’s unlikely enough that it’s ludicrous. There’s like a 0.0000000000000000000000000001% chance.
That is about the chance of you being hit by a meteor today. The chance of Love leaving is at least as much as the chance of you getting hit my lightning today.
Cavs releasing Boozer and then him going back on hand shake agreement to sign with Utah was also ludicrous, but it happened. Rockets declining option on Parsons to try to re-sign him as RFA instead of UFA and then losing him to Dallas cause they misread market was also ludicrous. Bill Duffy forgetting to file the paperwork for Anthony Carter’s player option in 2003 and thus giving Miami an additional 4.1 million in cap room was ludicrous. Ludicrous things happen in the NBA. Until the contract is signed in 2015, the Love free agency is a risk. By accounts I’ve… Read more »
Not the same thing at all. The Cavs are going to be able to offer more years and money to Love than any other team. Bringing up those examples is extremely misleading.
There is absolutely zero chance either guy leaves after this year.
LOL. OK.
Why do players generally leave teams?
1. Money
2. The team sucks
Neither of these is going to be a factor for the Cavs. They can offer the most money and they are certainly not going to suck.
There’s a reason why players line up to play with Leb. He’s a great teammate. So stop with the paranoid fantasies or in your case, probably wishes, that the team is going to lose their best players next year.
“Absolutely zero chance” is a pretty absurd statement. I think it’s pretty much zero LeBron leaves and low that Love does but saying there is no chance is ridiculous. You left out the third major reason which is “Wants to play in a big market / for a team he likes, etc” which does not match with Love. I do agree the possibility is low but saying it is zero warranted Nate’s response.
There are 3 options for discussing a player’s impending free agency:
1. You think the player will stay.
2. You think the player will leave.
3. You write a joke post about it.
If you don’t agree, why don’t you go watch some MLS preseason.
Well as much as I didn’t want the trade to happen the ball is really rolling now. A blocked trade based on rules violations would no doubt screw the Cavs so I hope it all goes down smoothly.
In terms of blocking the trade, has the NBA ever blocked a major trade between two teams in which it did not hold an ownership stake? The main example of a blocked trade that everyone points to is the Paul trade, but the unique thing there was that the NBA owned the Pelicans at the time. Stern blocked that trade in his role as owner of Pelicans, I believe.
The closest precedent was probably blocking Juan Howard’s signing by Miami. Stern ruled that Miami had incorrectly calculated Their cap and that an Alonzo Mourning renegotiation that was agreed to but not in print (I think) violated cap. Signing vetoed and Howard ended up back w/ Bullets. Those kinds of multi staged signings are common now, even arguably necessary given the complex nature of exceptions. But a proven deal to extend Love would be grounds for veto. Doubt there’s any paper trail.
That picture of Mike Miller makes him look like Andrew WK.
http://elephantmusictalk.blogspot.com/2012/04/andrew-wk-interview-gundams-i-get-wet.html
Why did the Cavs sign Wiggins, which necessitated the 30 day delay, if a deal to trade him was close to being struck?
I am pretty sure they couldn’t trade him when he was unsigned. But I am not 100% sure.
Yeah that’s right.
They could have traded his rights.
makes the salary match easier. wigging before signing had a -0- dollar value on his contract.
Correct. Had to have that salary on the books for matching purposes.
If they traded Wiggins as an unsigned asset, that would be another 5.x million they would need to add to match Love’s salary number.
OK, that makes sense. This begs another question, though. Why didn’t the CAVS sign Wiggins to his rookie-scale contract at the beginning of July? I believe the Bucks signed Parker the first week of July, so why didn’t we sign Wiggins then? The trade for Love could have already been completed. I hate dragging this out.
Love is coming here. This will not be an issue. This team is going to be great right away. No, this is not morally complex. This is how teams are built. There is nothing to be sad about or feel weird about. Griffin has had one of the best offseasons ever.
I am shocked this is your opinion. It is totally out of the blue.
It will be really hard for anything to be done, but it’s still a possibility. My worry would be that Silver wants to use the Cavs as an example, but it seems counter intuitive to do since it’s a big name player going to a small market team and not a big market team.
There are a lot of “what ifs” that can be discussed here but most are pretty unlikely. Two are touched on in your piece: 1) the league blocking the deal and 2) Love leaving after a year. It might be worth writing a post that takes a closer look at the likelihood of either of these things happening. At first glance, both seem unlikely but I don’t have a clear idea of the number of teams that have had trades blocked for reasons you discussed (aside from the case of Joe Smith, which seems unique in several ways) or the… Read more »
It would be difficult for the NBA to prove that a contract extension was agreed upon, unless the Cavs FO was dumb enough to put something in writing.