Devilzsidewalk wrote:no, I'm right. Love has an advantage against centers by taking them out of the paint with his jumper and using his quickness on the glass to get position and he has enough strength to defend them. Against PFs they're going to be in his grill the whole way on offense D'ing him up and can kill him offensively with their speed advantage.
Well, actually this is the heart of the problem with the Jefferson/Love combo. We both agree that Love is going to have trouble against faster PF's - but this is also a common argument for playing Jefferson at center. In my opinion, neither guy is fast enough to guard PF's but neither guy is big enough to effectively guard centers. They have trouble guarding exactly the same players. Love is reasonably physical, but even against tall PF's like Gasol/KG/Wallace/etc he is so small that they look right over him - the situation is exacerbated against the bigger centers. Jefferson, while slightly bigger, doesn't seem as physical - and he's still overmatched by most centers despite his size advantage over Love. They are just a bad defensive combination, either one alone you might get by with due to the other skills they bring to the table but the combination doesn't bode well. Worse yet, to date Love hasn't shown any shooting touch at any range. I know you were big on him coming out of college, and his range was one of the reasons, but I've never seen it. He looked bad as a rookie. Hopefully he'll regain his touch, I don't think the wolves can expect him to get much more explosive around the basket so this will be a key to the development of his offensive game.
Still despite all my concerns about the effectiveness of the combination, I'll be the first to say we really haven't seen much of it. It seemed last year that Love and Jefferson spent just about the minimum time possible on the court together (when Jefferson was still active that is), maybe seeing them together this year will force me to re-evaluate.
