RollWithEm

He has the potential, if he continues to improve massively every offseason like he has been so far, to be a top 10 PF of all-time without a doubt.

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But that's just me.

Da Grinch

stats are nice and Love's stats are eye popping ...but it doesn't translate into winning basketball.

if people were talking about Love as a role player if his team wins it wouldn't matter but people keep putting him in the class of guys who carry their teams ...and love if he cant carry his team to anything but last place he shouldn't be included with them.

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Democracy is 2 wolves and a lamb deciding what to eat for lunch. Liberty is a well armed lamb contesting the vote.

e-monk

I think he was on the way to doing something (breaking the .500 mark and contending for a playoff spot) this season until Rubio went down - which is to say that no player can do it all by himself

Da Grinch

its true no one player can do it by himself,its a team game....but if people persist on comparing him out his depth (against all time greats and other top players of today ) then grade him accordingly

real stars dont get passes for missing the playoffs , they get killed for it . when garnett was a t-wolf and he missed the playoffs people really weren't concentrating on the fact that he was starting alongside mark blount , trent hassell and marko jaric and that wally szczerbiak played in just 40 games, nor was alot of attention given to the fact that he was playing on a hurt knee for most of those 2 seasons .

its life , you aren't always going to play with great players , but if you really lets say a top 10 or so player , the best at your position your team should at the very least in playoff contention(unless you are playing hurt), if you or anyone else is going to try and pit him against all time greats, the wolves shouldn't be so much worse than teams like the jazz and the suns.

its simple if Love were truly the caliber of player people are propping him up to be , his team would be be better for a number of reasons mostly interconnected .

1. he'd be a more impactful passer , thus making his teammates better or at least more useful ....but he really is not making an impact passing the ball at all. he averages 1.9 assists and has an assist ratio of 10.0 compare that to other guys in the league like al jefferson who averages 2.4 ast and 12.5 ast ratio ...and he's supposed to be a black hole.

when you compare Love to the the best of his type(high usage 4's) its rare to see numbers like that especially in face up guys who have more opportunities to pass, even a guy like dirk sports better numbers in these facets despite playing most of his career with jason kidd and steve nash (the years he didn't play with them , they were were significantly higher) guys like webber , gasol garnett, barkley , karl malone even tim duncan all have career avg. of at least 3.2 assists a game and an assist rating of 16.0 (in both cases pau gasol)

2. he'd get double teamed more because other teams saw his as such a threat and basically admit if they dont stop him they will lose , that teams dont see him as that level of threat limits his chances to pass to open teammates .

3. he is a mediocre at best defensive player , if he isn't a top tier offensive threat but not good at defense either to me he has limited value ,a good player yes, but someone who should be compared to historical greats or considered among the top players of today ...no.


on a good team or at least a team with respected offensive threats a person would have to assume his scoring averages would come down maybe significantly and with better talent possibly better rebounders , his rebounding too in the end it might allow him to be a better player but as it is 26 and 13 on a team double digit games under .500 ring as hollow numbers

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Democracy is 2 wolves and a lamb deciding what to eat for lunch. Liberty is a well armed lamb contesting the vote.

Najee

The problem is that if the difference maker is a pass-only point guard who is terrible at most other aspects while coming off a major knee injury, then that is another strike against Kevin Love.

Love looks like the classic "big numbers-small impact" type player, particularly in this context in which he is being compared. There have been cases of great players playing with bad teammates, and typically those teams have been at least on the brink of the playoffs to low-level playoff teams. Minnesota was 17-65 in Love's breakout season in 2010-11 and went 26-40 in 2011-12.

In addition to what Da Grinch said, Love shoots a low percentage relative to his position. It really is inexcusable that Love is a career .449 shooter given that he has a good low-post game.

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And when the groove is dead and gone, you know that love survives and we'll rock forever.

XxIrvingxX

Kevin Love is still without a doubt the best PF in the NBA right now, which is to say a lot, but there's definitely a lot to be said about his team playing. Often times when I watch him play I see him focus a lot more on getting the rebounds than actually playing defense. It seems like his stats is the only thing he really cares about. I can remember when game when he would be camped inside waiting to try to get a rebound or an offensive one on the other end, and when he was at the perimeter, he was shouting and demanding to have the ball given to him.

Kevin Love is definitely a great player, there's no denying that, but I think the problem is that he's not an ideal teammate. That's the only reason I can think of as to why a guy that puts up the numbers that he does can't get his team to a somewhat decent record just judging by how I watch him play. It seems like he's improved with that when it comes to the offensive end, but he still plays little to no defense at all on the other end and seems to just care for the rebounds only, and so far from the games I've seen him play this season that hasn't really changed much.

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e-monk

dude, april 2012

Quote:

In addition to what Da Grinch said, Love shoots a low percentage relative to his position. It really is inexcusable that Love is a career .449 shooter given that he has a good low-post game.

but if you want to get into it your point vis low % is bullshit - he's taking 5 treys a game - dont look at straight fg%, with all the treys you have to look at efg% which is actually pretty decent

Najee

A whopping eight months ago.

It still doesn't underscore the fact that Minnesota generally is sitting deep in the lottery despite Kevin Love's video game numbers -- which is not bullshit, but a fair indicator his performance does not translate into improving his team's fate.

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And when the groove is dead and gone, you know that love survives and we'll rock forever.

Najee

No, bullshit is a power forward shooting .352 from the field this season and jacking up 5 3-pointers per game at a .217 clip. Instead of adjusting his play because of his hand fracture, Kevin Love continues to jack up ill-advised shots. Even factoring out his 3-pointers, Love is shooting .412 from the field.

It's funny you're sitting on one thread berating Allen Iverson and but now you're praising a player who effectively is a worse version of him in a power forward package. At least when Iverson was putting up his volume production, he was dragging his team to the playoffs regularly. Love's breakout season led to a 17-65 record and his one all-NBA so far resulted in another year where his team was last in the Northwest Division.

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And when the groove is dead and gone, you know that love survives and we'll rock forever.

e-monk

you want to go look at the efficiency stats before you run your mouth some more or are you happy being wrong?

Career Love: PER 22.1 TS% .552 efg% .482
Career AI: PER 20.9 TS% .518 efg% .452

on 6 points higher usage = that much more chucking on the much worse efficiency

here's a couple other points of comparison for you (both PFs of some note)

JO'n career: PER 18.5 TS% .515 EFG% .466
EHayes career: PER 17.7 TS% .499 EFG% .452

XxIrvingxX

That has to be the worst comparison ever. You're seriously trying to compare a PG to a PF? That's stupid. A PG does a lot more for a team than a PF does, anyone who knows anything at all about basketball knows this. When your best player on your team is a guy who is a PF, and just scores a bunch and rebounds at an unreal rate, you're going to need more than that. If we were arguing about a PG who is failing to take his team to the playoffs again and again, then throwing in Iverson would make sense. How about you compare Amare when he first started out with the Knicks, or Garnett with the Timberwovles? Oh wait you can't because they actually had GOOD TEAMS! (well...Garnett didn't but he was an MVP who practically did everything out there, points, rebounds, assists, defense, Love doesn't do that, he just scores and rebounds at a much better rate).

Hell, nevermind the fact you're trying to compare a PG with a PF, when you compare the Sixers without Iverson with the Timberwolves without Love, it's still not a contest. The Sixers win. The Timberwolves from Love's breakout season were still horrible talent wise. The Timberwolves this year look like a good solid team that is still missing a few important pieces, but even then I'd still take the Sixers team over this Timberwolves team.

Come on man.

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Luke

Well for starters Iverson was a shooting guard. So yeah. And the point guard position in the NBA isn't nearly as important as it's made out to be, this isn't college basketball. The NBA is obviously dominated by the big man. But Kevin Love isn't a dominant big man, he's an all star level talent with superstar stats who has had a terrible year. Everyone who said he wasn't the best power forward in the league at the beginning of the season is starting to look really smart right about now.

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Formerly VanillaPrice

XxIrvingxX

His mainstay position was point guard, not shooting guard.

And a big man can't be a Lebron James, or a Kobe Bryant, or a Michael Jordan. They can't give their teams great records while being the only all star level talent on the team.

Yea, sure, the NBA is dominated by the big man, but unless we're talking fantasy league teams or something, a big man is not the most valuable kind of player to have atm, especially when you consider the lack of all star level talent centers.

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Luke

That's simply not true. I watched Allen Iverson's entire career, he was a shooting guard in a point guards body. Philly's entire strategy throughout his successful years consisted of putting a bigger guard next to him to hide his defensive deficiencies (see Eric Snow) so that he could play his natural postion. Larry Brown literally came out and said that he wasn't the first point guard since Magic to win MVP because he was a shooting guard.

The whole reason players like Kobe, Michael, Lebron, and Magic were/are so special were because they were able to dominate a big man's game while not being a big man. And the notion that a big man needs an "all star player next to him" to win is not a fair argument because none of the players listed above (all of who are probably among the ten best players to ever play this game) did so without all star talent around them. In fact, the only players that I am aware of that won without a single all star around them are Tim Duncan in 2003 and Hakeem in 1994, two big men who are both, coincidentally, top ten players themselves. Basketball always has, and probably always will be, a big man's game, especially the NBA.

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Formerly VanillaPrice

XxIrvingxX

I wasn't arguing that Iverson played like a point guard, I was arguing that the pg position was what he mostly played as in his career, which is what he did, did he not? Yes he was a shooting guard when it comes to the style he played but when he was scoring like crazy against the Lakers in the finals what position did he play the most in that series?

Dwyane Wade won a title without an all star around him. Now sure, you're going to go ahead and point to Shaq, who almost won MVP that year but go ahead and look at how he played in that series. Was that anywhere close to being an all star performance, let alone a good and/or valuable performance? I rest my case.

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