Dr Positivity wrote:Doctor MJ wrote:I will say: He clearly was never able to conjure this again in Cleveland and this was a major disappointment for me, but I do think it speaks to how physically dominant he was able to be when he was young (poor man's Barkley), and that this really wasn't something he could sustain into middle-age NBA body maturity.
It would have to be a coincidence that Love went from his PEAK to totally not the same guy physically/mentally over the course of a summer, just as Lebron got him. Plausible, but it seems more likely that it had everything to do with playing for a new team and as the 3rd guy, to me. One of the best comparables for the midcareer falloff physically and mentally in Deron Williams, but he still put up a few NJ and BKN seasons that raw boxscore wise aren't miles off before it went.
Why is "Love underperformed statistically with Cleveland" less plausible than "Love overperformed statistically with Minnesota?" As I said when I look at Love's game in Cleveland, which I think is underrated if anything and caused a lot of issues in playoff matchups for opponents in particular, "only" being a solid 17-19ppg 3rd option scorer seems perfectly fine for his skillset as an average size and athleticism PF who's good at several things offensively but not lights out at any of them. He shouldn't be as good in the post as a player like Pau or LMA when looking at his size and skill level down there, his 3pt shot was never spectacular just pretty good which still makes him one of the best shooting PFs, and his passing was above average but hardly a dominant thing to me. The problem with Cavs Love appears to be talent as much as anything else, it wasn't like he was this enigma who brought out the Minnesota version once every 2 weeks but checked out mentally.
When it comes to Lebron hurting his numbers, I see more of an excuse for Bosh than Love. Wade and Lebron's slashing style of play and volume (2015 Irving for example only averaged 19.6ppg) meant they really needed Bosh in the floor spacer role rather than iso-ing like in Toronto, whereas if Love was dominant in the paint I think the shots would have been there beside Irving. Furthermore played a lot of time in Cleveland without Irving between injuries like Irving missing the whole start of 2016 and Irving missing 2018 giving lots of opportunity for Love to be the outright #2 in a way Bosh never really got, and then after Lebron left unlike Bosh who went back up to 21ppg before the blood clots, the old Love didn't return even a little bit. I would suggest the old Love was simply gone from the moment he started playing in Cleveland, whether it's because he lost too much weight or something, had a bad summer mentally or because on a good team he couldn't do that stat stuffing anymore. I don't mean to make this too much about Cavs Love since the question is about the TWolves version, but considering the results in Minnesota were always so mediocre it's worth looking at the bigger picture to see if he was that good. I don't really care that he went 40-42 with a good point differential one year, congrats... Bosh once won 40 games with Calderon, rookie Derozan, just got paid Hedo and Bargnani as the rest of his starting lineup. Julius Randle had the equivalent of 47 Ws this year playing with not that much talent. It's not that much of an accomplishment especially when you stack it up against some seasons like 2011 where they're HOLY SH*T bad, or 2012 where they play well with Rubio but then completely go in the tank without him. The 2013 team is also hardly the worst team in history despite getting nothing from Love that year.
I have no problem with 2014 Love being rated 2nd but I think Cassell is pretty strong, I'm also the only one so far to put him over players like Towns and Butler (who would be 2nd for me if not for GP). It's nearly impossible to use +/- stats for example to pick between Love and Cassell as they both played with crap depth.
I'm sorry I wasn't clear before. I was referring to Love in the post-LeBron years rather than the LeBron years. Love's smaller box score presence, as well as impact, is to be expected given the role he had, and the role he had made a lot of sense given that not just LeBron but Kyrie as well was given primacy over him.
I had hoped that Love would be able to take on more of a Minnesota-type role after LeBron left, but he really no longer seemed to be physically able to do what he did when he was young.
Re: Nearly impossible to use +/- to pick between Love & Cassell. 2 things:
1. I see a clear edge for Love. The reality that the Garnett T-Wolves had a much, much, much better player in Kevin Garnett who already had a super-massive On/Off with a high OnCourt the previous year, and Cassell played 90% of his minutes with Garnett and still has a worse OnCourt and far worse On/Off than Garnett really to me makes clear we shouldn't get carried away here based on an assumption of unexpected impact.
Cassell was the #2 man and best new addition on a team that went from winning 51 games to winning 58. With that, he makes my Top 5 for the franchise, but I don't feel any major pull to put him above the multi-time all-stars you have him above.
2. In general, if I can't see a major edge in +/- style data between two guys with excellent +/-, I do tend to really consider when one guy is taking on a considerably bigger primacy burden than the other. Not saying you have to do the same, but I struggle to see what you're using to elevate Cassell over Love other than the fact that he was contributing to a better team at the time.
Now, I want to be clear that I do understand you choosing Cassell over Love if you think his game scales better to championship teams than Love, so I get if that's how you're thinking.
I would point out though that in the year in question Love had a higher OnCourt than Cassell possibly in any season other than '03-04, so it's not like Cassell was in general playing on far more successful line ups than Love. And I would also point out that Love played a higher primacy role on a champion than Cassell ever did. So just be careful with any notion of categorizing one guy as a winner and one guy as not.
3. I believe earlier you mentioned Rubio, and if so I know what happened. Based on +/- just in that year, Rubio looks like he secretly as valuable as Love. But I think at this point we've seen that Rubio really doesn't have any magical ability to give guys stats like Love got, nor any impact so exceptional that it keeps teams from giving him up over and over again.
I think it makes sense to take that massive fall-off after Love left as evidence that he was doing legit work. Yes Rubio was injured for much of that year anyway and frankly I don't want to talk like I don't think Rubio isn't a good player - I think he's a classic sub-all-star level guy, Top 50 rather than Top 25. But to me you only end up lowering Love relative to a guy like Cassell if you're being super-skeptical of many different indicators that he was a bad ass in Minnesota, and I just can't justify that.
