Love averaged 14 pts and 8 rebs in the playoffs last year. He was instrumental in getting Lebron's 3rd ring so how you can you say they won in spite of Love? WTF. The Cavs keeping Wiggins and getting another max FA looks great in paper, but the reality is they traded for Love and he was instrumental in getting a ring last year. We don't know how that FA with Wiggins would have panned out. For all we know they might have signed a dude like LMA and he would have wilted just like this year on the Spurs, which means no 3rd ring for Lebron.
Kevin Love has been a very under-rated defender the last year and a half. He clearly has flaws, but the Cavs don't win a title last year without him. Had he not gotten hurt the year before last, the Cavs likely would be going for a third straight title. Love is a very good 3 point shooter and that gives James room to operate and is a huge part of the Cavs success. Last year in the finals Love took half his shots from behind the arc, where he hit 42% of them..... he averaged 17/11 and actually played very good team defense. The Cavs don't win that title without him. Also this "Wiggins superstar" talk isn't based on anything he has done offensively so far. He is a very talented defender, but he is very inconsistent and don't confuse volume scoring for being a good offensive player.
He wasn't as bad in the finals as you seem to think. His defense was crucial for the Cavs in that series, he was asked to hit 3's and to leave the land open for James and that is exactly what he did. He shot 42% from 3, he rebounded well, he still scored and made defensive switches.
He was a lot worse than you think. Look at his numbers. He shot poorly (your stats are way off) and missed a lot of time b/c of the concussion.
What surprises me the most was how hyped Wiggins was before he entered the draft. He was hailed as 2nd coming of LeBron. Then LeBron writes that letter without mentioning Wiggins, and it all went down from there.
http://www.basketball-reference.com/playoffs/2016-nba-finals-cavaliers-vs-warriors.html are the stats I'm quoting. Wait i see - I'm quoting his stats in the NBA Finals. Honestly, who gives a **** what he does in the Eastern playoffs? That's like quoting his D League stats. The won the NBA Finals in spite of him. He even came off the bench for one game.
Warriors had a front court of Bogut and Draymond Green, those two aren't exactly chopped liver wtf most PF/Cs matched up against the combo of those two would notice a drop in their stats. Also like I said Love averaged 13 pts and 9 rebs if he wasn't on the team who would've shot and rebounded those numbers all the way to the Finals? Tristan Thompson wouldn't have done **** since he is even smaller than KLove. Saying anybody could have done it is just wrong because KLove provides spacing and "gravity" just like Ryan Anderson so he also has intangibles for his team...except he doesn't suck ass as much as Ryan Anderson. Who were the FAs Cavs could have signed instead of Love? LMA? LOL do you see his performance in the playoffs this year?
Bogut was chopped liver in last year's finals. Go look at his stats and minutes. In last year's finals, Love had 3 games of 25 or fewer minutes and missed another game altogether. In other words, for 4 out of 7 games, he was essentially a non-factor. Also, to answer your question, Lebron could very easily have played PF.
They had a slow white big guy starting for them during their run, and probably would have won last year if he played in the last 3 games of the Finals b/c the Warriors lacked size and rebounding without him.
Maybe Kevin Love had something to do with Bogut being chopped liver. Lebron played PF while Love played C when Cavs became small ball so Love and Bogut matched up a lot. In game 5 and game 7 Love barely scored and had a horrible FG% but recorded a +/- of 18 and 22 and he played 30 mins each game, that showed he was contributing on the court otherwise he would have been pulled and/or his advanced stats would have been horrible. Great, what about the other 4 games? Cavs won against GSW by the skin of their teeth, if Love hadn't been there in some of the other games then they would have lost the series. Again, Love recorded an overall performance of 14.7 pts and 8.8 rebs for the playoffs and that includes all the games where he had horrible nights. Not all of Cavs games all the way to the Finals had been blowouts, if KLove wasn't there to provide spacing and a respectable pt production they might not have even made the Finals in the first place. And that's just last year, what about this year? Love upped his production to 17 pts and 10.4 rebs! To argue that the Love trade didn't work out for the Cavs is just dumb, they won a ring and Love played a part in that. That's like the best outcome you can hope for already, you can argue whether another FA would have done a better job but at the end of the day you take the known 1 ring and at least 3 Finals appearances in 3 years over the unknown. Love fits a lot with Lebron's playstyle because Lebron loves to play PF in winning time, Love can provide spacing for him and Irving to do their thing in the paint and he isn't that bad a defender at the C because he's pretty bulky for a stretch PF. He's the best stretch 4 in the league and compared to other stretch 4s like LMA, Ryan Anderson, Ibaka and Millsap he has dropped off the least in the playoffs. While he is extremely injury prone, Love is also very young, if he can be healthy he will be good for a long time and he will help carry the team along with Irving when Lebron gets old.
Wrong. Kevin Love missed game 3 of the finals, and in that game, Bogut played 12 minutes. This simply doesn't make any sense whatsoever. Bogut didn't play much in the series, but he started every game he played. Tristan Thompson started for the Cavs. Logically, wouldn't that mean that Thompson was primarily matched up with Bogut? Well, yeah, if you're talking about removing him and not replacing him with anyone. Also, you're talking about 3 games, not 4. Who cares about the playoffs as a whole? They're irrelevant. Only the finals matter since the Cavs steamrolled through the east. The Cavs could've started Motiejunas throughout the playoffs and made it to the finals.
Yes, and they steamrolled it partly because of Kevin Love. Look at the box scores against Raptors for example, the Cavs steamrolled the Raps 4-2 however the 2 losses they had was when Love played horribly. OTH, the other games he was great scoring 25 pts or getting 10 rebs etc. So its pretty dumb to say the Cavs would still reach the Finals with a player like Motiejunas who averages 5 pts and 2 rebs because its not like the Cavs didn't need Love's 14 pts and 7.8 rebs to reach the Finals. And what happens when they reach the finals? Sure Love's numbers went down but guess what every team that GSW faced had players dropping in stats, it's not like Love was a mental midget and he was the only guy who played horribly against GSW in the entire league, they set the regular season record for a reason. Which "anyone" are you talking about? You can play the what if game all day long but at the end of the day it was Love who contributed a ring, not anyone else. How do you even know that "anyone" will result in a ring? He might have gotten injured like what happened with Bogut when the Cavs signed him or might have even played worse than Love. Like I said Love already contributed to a ring. That's a fact. You don't know if your hypothetical would have also done the job and even if he did it would have still resulted in the same outcome so I have no clue what exactly are you trying to say here. And what about this season? I guess Love's 17 pts and 10 rebs average is also a number "anyone" can easily get? LMAO. If given a choice between Love, Griffin, LMA, Ibaka and Millsap who would most people choose for their team? These are all the PFs in trade rumors at the time. Love would easily be in the top 2 choices for most people knowing what everyone knows now.
Absolutely wrong. In it's victories, Cleveland won by 31 points, 19 points, 38 points, and 26 points. You're not going to be able to convince anyone that Cleveland wouldn't have been able to win if they had a replacement level player instead of Love. This is such a stupid perspective. If you're only going engage in discussions about historical facts, then why bother posting in a thread about hypotheticals? Because Love played at the level of a replacement player in last year's finals. Look at his game logs. They're extremely underwhelming. No offense, but do you understand the concept of "hypotheticals"? No one knows if they would've come true. It all comes down to which side makes the better argument. Your argument boils down to "Love played. The Cavs won. Therefore, regardless of how little it was, he did contribute. Which is more than you can say about any hypothetical." You really should quit arguing. You can't win.
Of course I understand the concept of hypotheticals, the problem is you are saying a hypothetical player will be better than kevin love without any basis. We don't know whether that hypothetical player will be better or not because Kevin Love faced the Warriors, aka the best regular season team in the league. Your "replacement player" argument doesn't make sense because GSW has been known to lockdown almost all players last year, that's why they won a record number of games during the regular season. If it was so easy to have great games against the Warriors how they did break the regular season record? Obviously with players like Bogut, Green, Thompson and Iguadala they boast amazing defense as well as offense. So why will "replacement player A" perform better against GSW when superstars are getting shut down? You don't even have any name out there to throw against KLove, you're just saying some random player will be better. How's that supposed to be a convincing argument? There is also an issue where the Cavs won a ring last year, so how exactly can your hypothetical be better when it will still end with the same result at best and they don't get a ring at worst? So maybe replacement player A scores 2 more pts per game than Love, so what? It still ended in the same result. What if your replacement player got shut down or didn't have good defense like LMA? Then Lebron doesn't win his 3rd ring. If you have a control group and you have a test group and the best result of the test group is the result of the control group, there is no reason to say the test group would have been better. BTW Kevin Love didn't just contribute "a little" he was an integral part of last season which is something you would've known if you watched the games. A lot of the stuff he did didn't show up in the stats, he played good defense and provided spacing which Lebron, Smith, Tristan Thompson and Irving needed because all of them liked to slash in the paint or score in the post, not everyone can be a stretch PF who is a good defender at both PF and C spots. If Love was so bad how come he still got played a lot? Lebron could have easily played PF, Thompson could have stayed at C and they could have just played Jefferson at SF. They still went with Love though, that shows he was doing something on the court.
First of all, the regular season is irrelevant. You or I could've played PF for the Cavs, and they still would've made the playoffs. The eastern conference playoffs are also irrelevant b/c Lebron/Irving could've carried them to the finals by themselves. The only thing that matters is what happened in the finals. Secondly, I've never said a replacement level player would've been better than Love was in the finals. I said that the Cavs still would've won w/ a replacement level player b/c, as a whole, Love had a terrible finals. I know you'll disagree with that, but the stats are on my side. Sure, a replacement level player most likely would've gotten shut down by GSW. But Love was also shut down. Despite that, Lebron was able to carry the Cavs to a title. Thirdly, my hypothetical would be better b/c the Cavs would've still had Wiggins so they would've been better poised for the future.
i meant for teams that have to guard the warriors. you basically can't hide them. being on the warriors is pretty much the only way they still have a place. like zaza. or bogut. even a lesser warriors offense like the rockets showed enes kanter can basically never play in the playoffs again in an important situation against a team like that. you just give so much up on defense.
