Love has been holding us back?!?!

[Feilong]

Some of those arguments to me are less about Love holding us back and more of a condemnation of the coaching staff as a whole. I have been saying for years now that we seem to have the worst developmental staff in the NBA. Besides a few players who I think would have grown anyway on any team (Pek, Love) very few guys seem to make any significant improvements on out teams and a lot of our players flat out regress.

Rubio has been pretty stagnant, Flynn totally went down hill, Barea has been trash, Martin started good then I don't know what happened, Brewer not as good as Denver, LRAMM, Williams got worse and more timid, Shved, etc.

It's not just Adelmans staff either, we seem to have have had this issue for years with multiple staffs. We never seem to have those players who suddenly have breakout years.

Absolutely true. One more reason why we don't need multiple rookies. Slim chances they will develop properly. That's why trade immediately Bennett, maybe also add Bazz if he brings positive value to the trade, bring experienced players and focus all your effort primary on Dieng and Wiggins and secondary on Lavine and Rubio.

[urinesane]

The idea that without Love this team is better is nonsense.

If they win 40 games this year it won't be because Love is gone, it will be because this team is finally being built with complementary pieces and depth.

None of Love's teams had any depth to them, last year was the best starting lineup he has played with (and they were fantastic overall), but then the dogsh*t bench and JJ would blow it during their minutes and make it so basically the starters had to blow people out early and hope the bench didn't let them back into games.

Context is important.

[horaceworthy]

The article's almost well written enough to distract you from it being complete hogwash.

[alexlgnd]

It makes sense though. The entire paradigm of competitive by evolution is everything. Look at the trends, and it's very true. Unfortunately, I don't agree with all of it, I think Love was a great player who really doesn't define the power forward at all. He does hurt our guards though, and that can't be denied at all.

[Note30]

Some of those arguments to me are less about Love holding us back and more of a condemnation of the coaching staff as a whole. I have been saying for years now that we seem to have the worst developmental staff in the NBA. Besides a few players who I think would have grown anyway on any team (Pek, Love) very few guys seem to make any significant improvements on out teams and a lot of our players flat out regress.

Rubio has been pretty stagnant, Flynn totally went down hill, Barea has been trash, Martin started good then I don't know what happened, Brewer not as good as Denver, LRAMM, Williams got worse and more timid, Shved, etc.

It's not just Adelmans staff either, we seem to have have had this issue for years with multiple staffs. We never seem to have those players who suddenly have breakout years.

Absolutely true. One more reason why we don't need multiple rookies. Slim chances they will develop properly. That's why trade immediately Bennett, maybe also add Bazz if he brings positive value to the trade, bring experienced players and focus all your effort primary on Dieng and Wiggins and secondly on Lavine and Rubio.

I think Bazz should be our sixth man type guy. In that he's a beast scorer, but his defense is faulty, so backups SF's won't be a huge issue, so maybe he shouldn't be traded.

[horaceworthy]

It makes sense though. The entire paradigm of competitive by evolution is everything. Look at the trends, and it's very true. Unfortunately, I don't agree with all of it, I think Love was a great player who really doesn't define the power forward at all. He does hurt our guards though, and that can't be denied at all.

How so?

[alexlgnd]

It makes sense though. The entire paradigm of competitive by evolution is everything. Look at the trends, and it's very true. Unfortunately, I don't agree with all of it, I think Love was a great player who really doesn't define the power forward at all. He does hurt our guards though, and that can't be denied at all.

How so?

PER's, and the eye test. When you have a four poaching the arc, it forces the other guards and swings into unfavorable positions. I'm not blaming Love, I was a huge fan of him. It's just there in the stats, or do you think that's all smoke and I'm wrong?

[urinesane]

It makes sense though. The entire paradigm of competitive by evolution is everything. Look at the trends, and it's very true. Unfortunately, I don't agree with all of it, I think Love was a great player who really doesn't define the power forward at all. He does hurt our guards though, and that can't be denied at all.

How so?

PER's, and the eye test. When you have a four poaching the arc, it forces the other guards and swings into unfavorable positions. I'm not blaming Love, I was a huge fan of him. It's just there in the stats, or do you think that's all smoke and I'm wrong?

That seems more like an issue of poor wing players and their inability to shoot more than Love taking their opportunities.

If your best long range shooter is your PF, you kind of need him to shoot the 3 (or get better wing shooters).

[King Stannis]

Interesting article.

1. Don't think Love held the Wolves back. Poor coaching and mediocre rosters did.
2. His premise takes for granted that Wiggins will be not only be good, but a star. And within two years. This is dubious in the time frame alloted.
3. He implies that the Cavs coaching staff will not be able to adapt to their personnel in anything less than two seasons. We don't know a whole lot about David Blatt right now, but one thing that seems to be the consensus amongst those who know him well is that he is a brilliant tactician.
4. Again with Kyrie Irving and the assumption he'll continue to be a score first PG. He won't be. He no longer needs to score 30 points just so the Cavs won't get blown out.

[alexlgnd]

PER's, and the eye test. When you have a four poaching the arc, it forces the other guards and swings into unfavorable positions. I'm not blaming Love, I was a huge fan of him. It's just there in the stats, or do you think that's all smoke and I'm wrong?

That seems more like an issue of poor wing players and their inability to shoot more than Love taking their opportunities.

If your best long range shooter is your PF, you kind of need him to shoot the 3 (or get better wing shooters).

Yeah, we did need better players, but the ones we had that we're supposed to supplement that scoring load never did, and we're never efficient. And it was never a question of if Love could shoot the three, but any offense built around your best rebounder hanging beyond the arc for an excessive amount of three balls was beyond me. He never would've had to do that if the rest of our team progressed they way they should've. It was a poor design of our team hampered by inefficient growth from the 2 and 3.

[alexlgnd]

https://espngrantland.files.wordpress.c ... t_1152.jpg

As a 4, Love’s growing obsession with 3-point shooting is the most noteworthy aspect of his shooting behavior. Regardless of position, he is one of the league’s most active perimeter shooters. Only four players — Curry, Damian Lillard, Durant, and Love — took more than 450 shots “above the break” during the 2013-14 regular season.. Love’s favorite shot has become the left wing 3. During his rookie year, he took four shots from that area. Last season, he attempted 229 shots from the same zone, by far the most in the NBA. For context, J.R. Smith was second with 189 attempts. J.R. Smith: not a power forward, by the way.

Now I'm not saying that Love was bad, or awful, or implying anything else. What I am saying about the Wolves is that we had a Power Forward shooting more threes, and hanging by the arc. This wouldn't be an issue if we had better players and guards who were efficient and able to shoot better: which is in turn a large problem. The rosters before last year were terrible, and our teams growth and ability to compete we're definitely enhance by Love, but the stagnant of our grown players, or guards in our system is definitely correlated by advanced metrics. Am I saying the reason Rubio can't nail a jump shot is Love? No. What I am saying it is extremely odd that guards floundered playing in a system with him.

Top photo is shot chart. I can't post images yet.

[horaceworthy]

PER's, and the eye test. When you have a four poaching the arc, it forces the other guards and swings into unfavorable positions. I'm not blaming Love, I was a huge fan of him. It's just there in the stats, or do you think that's all smoke and I'm wrong?

My eye test came up with a different conclusion.

The teammate PER portion of the article was dreadful. Ignored the impact of injury in the case of Budinger, Rubio, Jefferson and Webster. Ignored coaching/roles with Sessions, Koufos and Beasley. Nit-picked degree of ineptitude with Wes, Ellington and Williams. Failed to mention that Kevin Martin's shooting percentages have suffered every other year fluctuations since he was 25 years old (guess the good news is he should see an uptick in trade value if he sticks to his schedule). Ignored that the sample size for Brewer's PER uptick was 148 minutes and 51 shots. Ignored any semblance of common sense in his mention of Shabazz. Decided not to mention Ridnour (the guard who probably have played the most minutes with Love) dropping from PERs of 15, 13.6 and 13 with 3 of the 4 best TS%'s of his career to 9 and the worst shooting year of his career because it didn't fit his narrative.

[alexlgnd]

PER's, and the eye test. When you have a four poaching the arc, it forces the other guards and swings into unfavorable positions. I'm not blaming Love, I was a huge fan of him. It's just there in the stats, or do you think that's all smoke and I'm wrong?

My eye test came up with a different conclusion.

The teammate PER portion of the article was dreadful. Ignored the impact of injury in the case of Budinger, Rubio, Jefferson and Webster. Ignored coaching/roles with Sessions, Koufos and Beasley. Nit-picked degree of ineptitude with Wes, Ellington and Williams. Failed to mention that Kevin Martin's shooting percentages have suffered every other year fluctuations since he was 25 years old (guess the good news is he should see an uptick in trade value if he sticks to his schedule). Ignored that the sample size for Brewer's PER uptick was 148 minutes and 51 shots. Ignored any semblance of common sense in his mention of Shabazz. Decided not to mention Ridnour (the guard who probably have played the most minutes with Love) dropping from PERs of 15, 13.6 and 13 with 3 of the 4 best TS%'s of his career to 9 and the worst shooting year of his career because it didn't fit his narrative.

He still had a downward trending PER. That does fit the narrative. I'm not saying it's our system or what, but guard play when Love has been involved, meaning apart of the team, has been sour.

[King Stannis]

Having read it again, the author really makes Love the causal factor in terms driving the Wolves to a lack of success i.e. because of Love the Wolves are bad. Very, very few players have this impact unless they are locker room cancers or don't play team ball (Bynum).

Very little thought given to the GM who tried to put a good team together on paper, rather than a team built around his best player's strengths and weaknesses.

His premise, as a consequence, is flawed.

[alexlgnd]

Having read it again, the author really makes Love the causal factor in terms driving the Wolves to a lack of success i.e. because of Love the Wolves are bad. Very, very few players have this impact unless they are locker room cancers or don't play team ball (Bynum).

Very little thought given to the GM who tried to put a good team together on paper, rather than a team built around his best player's strengths and weaknesses.

His premise, as a consequence, is flawed.

Agreed. All I'm saying is the metrics behind poor guard play are fact. Kahn put together an awful team. I have hope for the future. I'm just saying we had bad guards, and poor efficiency ratings to prove it. I'm not sold on Bennett. I'm hopeful for Wiggins, and I'm hopeful for Lavine. I want to be a contender so bad, and metrics and math are solid on this, we had poor play from guards.

[King Stannis]

Having read it again, the author really makes Love the causal factor in terms driving the Wolves to a lack of success i.e. because of Love the Wolves are bad. Very, very few players have this impact unless they are locker room cancers or don't play team ball (Bynum).

Very little thought given to the GM who tried to put a good team together on paper, rather than a team built around his best player's strengths and weaknesses.

His premise, as a consequence, is flawed.

Agreed. All I'm saying is the metrics behind poor guard play are fact. Kahn put together an awful team. I have hope for the future. I'm just saying we had bad guards, and poor efficiency ratings to prove it. I'm not sold on Bennett. I'm hopeful for Wiggins, and I'm hopeful for Lavine. I want to be a contender so bad, and metrics and math are solid on this, we had poor play from guards.

Agreed on your guards. When you have a talented big man, you need a wing who can score well, or PG that can score. Given Love's unique skill-set, a slashing type scorer would have been a better fit. Or, if Rubio could shoot consistently.

[alexlgnd]

Having read it again, the author really makes Love the causal factor in terms driving the Wolves to a lack of success i.e. because of Love the Wolves are bad. Very, very few players have this impact unless they are locker room cancers or don't play team ball (Bynum).

Very little thought given to the GM who tried to put a good team together on paper, rather than a team built around his best player's strengths and weaknesses.

His premise, as a consequence, is flawed.

Agreed. All I'm saying is the metrics behind poor guard play are fact. Kahn put together an awful team. I have hope for the future. I'm just saying we had bad guards, and poor efficiency ratings to prove it. I'm not sold on Bennett. I'm hopeful for Wiggins, and I'm hopeful for Lavine. I want to be a contender so bad, and metrics and math are solid on this, we had poor play from guards.

Agreed on your guards. When you have a talented big man, you need a wing who can score well, or PG that can score. Given Love's unique skill-set, a slashing type scorer would have been a better fit. Or, if Rubio could shoot consistently.

Yeah, I've been racking my brain over everything that's taken place with the roster. Kahn was a colossal idiot. And it's a fact, we've been horrendous in the front court. Rubio is a darling, but his shooting needs to improve, or he's even dead weight. Which is truly horrible. Our team had gone through so many roster changes and shifts. We need a regime and a plan that makes sense, because I'm tired of this. The adelman phase was never anything I got behind in the first place. I liked the Larry Brown hire instead, and now, we have the Saunders oligarchy, and I want that to work. I need it to work. And I hope that we'll finally get that, and it sucks we had to send Love off to get the return we need for it, but his exit, might finally be the shift and asset return we need to kick start the future and the next chapter.

[horaceworthy]

He still had a downward trending PER. That does fit the narrative. I'm not saying it's our system or what, but guard play when Love has been involved, meaning apart of the team, has been sour.

Putting that on Love when looking at the guards he's played with and how the coaches they played for used those guards, seems like an exercise in correlation =/= causation.

[alexlgnd]

He still had a downward trending PER. That does fit the narrative. I'm not saying it's our system or what, but guard play when Love has been involved, meaning apart of the team, has been sour.

Putting that on Love when looking at the guards he's played with and how the coaches they played for used those guards, seems like an exercise in correlation =/= causation.

Love plays out of position from time to time and we had **** guard play. That seems like fact to me.

[C.lupus]

I like how this guy:

Sony Tiwari
Professor of Music | Columbia Ed.D Candidate | Editor-In-Chief at Ten Pens| Co-Founder of Realativity Music

wrote an article about basketball using biology and evolution as the basis of the article. Stick to music Sony (if that's your real name).