No-more-rings wrote:Lost92Bricks wrote:If it's just about performance then when did Blake perform better than Love in 2014? Love averaged 26/13/4 on 59 TS%.
I thought it was pretty clear I was talking about postseason.
What good excuse do you have for Love being relatively pathetic in the playoffs? Griffin’s playoff performances in 2014 and especially 2015 were better than Love ever did. Don’t see how that’s really debatable either. If you want to take Love because he put up good numbers on a bad team in 2014, go ahead.
In his first ever playoff series, Kevin was actually very good for Cleveland. His outside shooting and rebounding was a serious problem for Boston. He had an early exit due to an unfortunate injury, and his shooting numbers were inconsistent, but that's going to happen when you're the third option on offense. Keep in mind also, this was when Blatt was still the coach, and Love has gone on record stating that he wasn't comfortable operating under the system Blatt put him in. And most players, including LeBron, have stated that Love was poorly utilized under Blatt and it was tough for him as a result to produce to the levels that were expected of him.
In his second playoff stint, he was consistently great until he reached the NBA finals, where he suffered a concussion in game 2 and that lingered throughout the series. Before that? He had a very good and often not talked about game 1 performance against a team that he had a tough time matching up with. And in the three series before that, he averaged a double double in the first two and had two great 20 point close out performances in the final games Cleveland won to advance to the NBA Finals.
In his third playoff stint, he actually had a couple poor games in the first two series, one of which was due to foul trouble. And then in the third, he was dominant, averaging 22/12 on 48% from the field and 53% from 3. Those are outrageous numbers for your third option. And then in the finals, he once again struggled with his shooting, which had a lot to do with being guarded by Draymond. Despite this, he was still able to find ways to contribute, and even broke the NBA record for most rebounds in a finals game when he had 21 in game 1. He averaged a double double in that series, nothing mediocre about that.
His fourth stint in the playoffs is without question his worst, and even then, it's not like he didn't have some notable performances. He was actually dominant in that Toronto series and was very helpful in the series against the Warriors, where he was now the second option. But for the most part, the team at this point was the LeBron show, even though Kevin did lead a Cavaliers comeback in a crucial game seven to avoid an early round upset.
All in all, I'm not really sure where you're getting this idea that Kevin was a pathetic playoff performer. He was actually better as the third option than he was the second, but even then he actually did very well in that role. His style of play made it difficult for him to remain consistent from the field, but he always managed to find ways to contribute. It's hard to judge Love's game by just going entirely off of stats because his style of play goes beyond that. When looking at his stats overall, it's easy to think that Love was a mediocre playoff performer. But when looking at each series side by side and applying context, he suddenly comes out looking a lot better. The final year is very weird since you'd think he'd be better as the second option than as the third, but nonetheless, I see nothing here that suggests he wasn't, at the very least, a good playoff performer. An almost walking double double who is an actual match up problem for a lot of teams? Yeah, I'll gladly take that as my third option on offense.
