People who are suggesting trading Parsons for a pick need to step back and realize what the consensus would have been if Morey would have traded Lowry for a pick and then never got Harden, and the Rockets got instead a Steven Adams type prospect. That's the risk you take if you start down this path every time a star comes available. Morey got lucky before. He might not get that lucky this time and Parsons' best NBA days might still be ahead of him just like Lowrys were. Oh and getting Steven Adams would have been considered good return on that pick FYI. You could have easily taken a Stab at a higher risk player who doesn't even become an NBA rotation player like his teammate Jeremy Lamb. Just saying. If Morey is gonna seriously look to move Parsons for a pick, he better be pretty damn confident that they are true front runners for a Love trade. Lastly... The moment Morey picks up the phone to gauge the value across the league, we will know about it pretty quick.
Scroll through the last several drafts, picks are rarely sure things. You know what you are getting with Parsons.
Working in the oil field sitting inside my unit 12 hours a day can get a little boring. So jokers such as yourself is very entertaining especially when they take schit literally so serious. Bwhahaha I see you stalking my sh5t . Again dude move around
Whoa! Love sliced and diced! Assuming Cyberx's source(s) were on target about Love's thoughts about Harden and Howard, it's well deserved, in my humble opinion. Harden and Howard have a history in the playoffs, and despite Harden's abysmal showing against Portland (which still has me scratching my head in bewilderment), he has had success in the playoffs, something a lot of folks around here seem to be forgetting. I know a lot of that is "what has he done for us lately?" feelings, which I can relate to, still being a bit shell shocked myself that the Blazers managed to beat us, but come on, people. What's Love's record in the playoffs?
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Good for you big baller, I am so happy you have money to contribute to the garm. You can edit your comments and all that good stuff. Let me hold 2 dollars big timer. Again I don't believe Love bashed our two stars like that period. All because cyberx contributes doesn't mean he is always right. I don't disagree with dude all the times . But hey continue to be his Internet bodyguard. Lol
Looking slightly to the left to see a persons post count and start date is HARDLY stalking. Don't flatter yourself dude, you're just another hater.
Hilarious isn't it? Two players that have been to the finals aren't winners...and he's the guy with not a single playoff win under his belt judging them. This better not be true or Kevin Love just looks silly.
I think the biggest mistake Morey made was to keep Lin, it's not Lin's fault, but if the knicks had kept him, I think we all know what videos we'd be seeing of "no d". Somewhere along the line (yeah....somewhere....) he went from takes plays off to never plays defense despite playing defense pretty much the same way. I watched a play in the first round where Chris Paul drove past Curry, had the door closed by 2 guys, so dribbled back out, then dribbled past him again, door closed again, then dribbled past him again and this time, easy pass to DeAndre for a dunk, all while Curry's feet were stuck in quicksand, leading to Jackson calling a timeout and taking him off CP3 for good, and this is what people are hoping Harden could be? **** James can already just stand there doing nothing.
Kevin Love is an a**hole. Wasn't he throwing his own Minny teammates under the bus several years now? Most likely he wants to play in Los Angeles or New York or Chicago. Great, the faster Morey realizes he's not coming to HOU, the better. Now can Morey work on getting a better coaching staff first? Cuz no matter how many stars we get, if they don't have a good game plan, it's gonna be the same results.
I have been a huge fan of Love, but he has been a chronic loser. While I think adding Love to this team is a definite upgrade, I do want to ask everyone this one very simple question. Does his addition put us as title contenders??? Would we better than OKC, San Antonio or the Clippers? If the answer is no, then perhaps Love isnt an answer. We all believed that adding Howard to this team should've resulted in a better playoff situation, but unfortunately Harden picked a bad time to go ice cold and give up on defense. Kevin Love's Minnesota experience doesnt make him a sure fire superstar, bc we have to remember that even bad teams need scorers to help carry them. Love has done so for a long time with Minnesota, but what does it mean when he doesnt have to be the offensive focal point? We shall know more tomorrow after the NBA lottery draft as cyberx has stated...Adding Kevin Love doesnt cure this team's underlying problem...And whether Love likes the players on this team or not doesnt matter. He will be moved to the highest bidder.
I would be shocked at the idiocy of Love if what's being said about him is true. This man hasn't even come close to the playoffs and he's been in the league awhile. He reminds me of Kevin Martin, puts up great numbers but I struggle to see the impact he makes on a team. That Wolves team had no business having as bad a record as they had.
Interesting article about Love's defense and his tendency to not even raise his hands to contest a shot. The article includes several video examples . Here's a few of the high points: Opponents are shooting 57.1 percent on those shots at the rim defended by Love, the highest mark in the league by any defender who defends at least six shots at the rim per game. Basically Love is getting into position to defend shots as often as anyone in the league; he's just generating extremely poor results. According to the numbers from Vantage, of the shots Love defends at the rim that he doesn't directly block or alter, his ratio of pressured shots to contested shots is about 2.4-to-1. That means he's about twice as likely to defend a shooter in the paint with his hands down than with his hands in the air. In the grand scheme of things, not getting a hand up on defense may seem like a small thing. But the research by Narsu has shown the difference to be huge: “ Moreover, we also find that shots near the basket are contested or altered on only 37.6% of the attempts. From here, we can start to calculate the value of a contested shot vs. pressured shot. Given that difference in FG% of about 20%, we can expect the value of a contested shot vs. pressured shot to be 0.4 points per possession near the basket or about 40 points per 100 possessions. Forty points may seem like a lot, but it’s like shooting bunnies near the basket while being wide open. http://bleacherreport.com/articles/1996656-is-kevin-love-holding-back-the-timberwolves-defense Spoiler The Minnesota Timberwolves have had an incredibly challenging season. They've been outscoring opponents by an average of 2.3 points per 100 possessions, a mark that is usually consistent with teams that win about .600 of their games, according to Pythagorean numbers at Basketball-Reference.com. But inconsistent play and late-game struggles have kept the Timberwolves hovering around .500 and out of the Western Conference playoff picture for most of the season. This inconsistency has shown up at both ends of the floor. While the blame on the offensive end is usually shared among a variety of players, star power forward Kevin Love is usually the target-in-chief for defensive criticism. So how much of the Timberwolves' defensive problems can we really attribute to Love? The quick answer is: not as much as you might think. Jim Mone/Associated Press Love is a phenomenal defensive rebounder but that's about the end of his highly visible defensive contributions. He's neither a physical enforcer nor an athletic shot-blocker, the typical boxes in which we categorize interior defenders. Incredibly, his defensive rebounding has even been twisted into a weakness, as he's often accused of hunting rebounds to pad his own numbers instead of playing within the team's defensive framework. The Timberwolves have actually been about 1.7 points better per 100 possessions defensively when Love is on the floor. However, the areas where Love seems to struggle overlap significantly with the team's defensive weaknesses, which can't help but emphasize a possible connection. The biggest hole in the Timberwolves' defense is right at the rim, where they allow opponents to shoot 64.9 percent, the highest mark in the league. They also allow the third-highest opponent field-goal percentage overall, 46.9 percent. Love's inability to effectively challenge shots inside and out appears to be a huge part of this. In the photo below you can see an example of how the Timberwolves usually play the pick-and-roll with Love and Nikola Pekovic. Since neither big man is particularly agile on the perimeter they generally use a conservative style, having either drop back and contain the ball-handler instead of hedging out to deter penetration: NBA.com This has become the league's defensive style du jour over the past few seasons, and it's the backbone of how the Indiana Pacers, Memphis Grizzlies and many other successful defenses defend the pick-and-roll. Love appears to have a good understanding of the philosophy and generally positions himself well. The breakdown comes in his response to being attacked. You can see in the video below that as Kyle Lowry comes off the screen, Love retreats into position. But as Lowry rises for the pull-up jumper, Love makes almost no attempt to contest the shot: There is an argument to be made that Love is making an intelligent choice here. By not contesting the shot he's goading Lowry into a mid-range pull-up, one of the least efficient offensive options on average. But by not contesting the shot he's also removing a significant portion of the difficulty for Lowry. One of the reasons the Pacers and Grizzlies have been so successful playing this style of pick-and-roll defense is not just that it encourages mid-range jumpers, it's that their big men are able to drop back and deny penetration while still contesting hard on those mid-range shots. The defense the Timberwolves play creates a certain advantage here. But by declining to contest the shots this defense forces, Love is undermining that advantage. It would also be easy to defend Love and say that he is guarding against a blow-by, keeping his feet on the floor to prevent ball-handlers from getting past him to the rim. The problem is that we see this lack of shot-contesting even when he's the last line of defense. Here, Raymond Felton comes off a pick-and-roll, entering the lane without a defender. Love comes out to meet him, but again his hands are at his sides: Love appears to be a step late because he's hesitant to leave Tyson Chandler alone at the rim for a lob, an entirely legitimate concern. But once he's committed to Felton there is no reason he shouldn't be in the air, either with hands or body, actively contesting the shot. This kind of play, where Love appears loath to leave his man near the basket, is probably one of the reasons he's developed a reputation for hunting rebounds at the expense of defensive rotations. On this Isaiah Thomas drive, Love again stays in box-out position on his man instead of cutting off penetration or contesting the shot at the rim: Here are two other examples of him coming out on a shooter only to leave his feet on the floor and his hands at his sides: This tendency to defend shooters without a hand in the air shows up strongly in Love's numbers. According to the NBA's player-tracking statistics Love defends nine shots at the rim per game, 12th-highest in the league. However, that number only represents how many shots are taken at the rim while Love is within five feet of the shooter. Opponents are shooting 57.1 percent on those shots at the rim defended by Love, the highest mark in the league by any defender who defends at least six shots at the rim per game. Basically Love is getting into position to defend shots as often as anyone in the league; he's just generating extremely poor results. With the help of Krishna Narsu, a researcher at Vantage Sports, we can pinpoint how much of those poor results may be coming from not actively contesting shots. Vantage Sports is a company that collects and analyzes basketball statistics through a blend of computer and human tracking. Vantage splits shot defense into several categories, but the two that matter to us here are pressured and contested shots. Pressured shots are ones where the defender is simply close to the shooter, while contested shots are ones where the defender also has a hand raised. According to the numbers from Vantage, of the shots Love defends at the rim that he doesn't directly block or alter, his ratio of pressured shots to contested shots is about 2.4-to-1. That means he's about twice as likely to defend a shooter in the paint with his hands down than with his hands in the air. In the grand scheme of things, not getting a hand up on defense may seem like a small thing. But the research by Narsu has shown the difference to be huge: “ Moreover, we also find that shots near the basket are contested or altered on only 37.6% of the attempts. From here, we can start to calculate the value of a contested shot vs. pressured shot. Given that difference in FG% of about 20%, we can expect the value of a contested shot vs. pressured shot to be 0.4 points per possession near the basket or about 40 points per 100 possessions. Forty points may seem like a lot, but it’s like shooting bunnies near the basket while being wide open. ” With this additional context, Love's passive shot-contesting looks like a much bigger chink in the Timberwolves' armor. But assigning blame completely to Love is complicated. This passive pattern of shot-defending stretches beyond just Love to many of the other Timberwolves' frontcourt players, implying that it may be intentionally systematic. In a piece at Grantland a few weeks ago, Zach Lowe explored this issue: “ Minnesota, it turns out, is the league’s most foul-averse team, and it is on pace to be one of the half-dozen most foul-averse teams in NBA history, per Basketball-Reference and NBA.com. The Wolves allow the fewest free throws per opponent field goal attempt in the league, just ahead of the Spurs — the most consistently foul-averse team of the last decade. ” However, while Lowe comes to the conclusion that some of this passivity is part of an intentionally conservative philosophy meant to avoid fouls, his piece also includes this quote from head coach Rick Adelman: “ “It almost takes an act of Congress for us to go out and foul somebody. You have to get after people in this league.” ” It's hard to read that quote and not see a huge disconnect between the style of defense the Timberwolves are using and the way the coach would like them to be playing. Clearly Adelman would like Love to be playing a somewhat more aggressive brand of defense in many situations. In that regard, Love's continued passivity contesting shots is undoubtedly harming the Timberwolves' defense; that harm can be pinned squarely on Love. But when it's a systemic issue and the entire frontcourt seems to be going out of their way to avoid fouls, you have to parse some of that blame out to the coach for either a poorly implemented system or poorly communicated goals. The bottom line is that the way Love has been playing defense this year has hampered the Timberwolves' defense. But by simply raising his hands and being a little more aggressive with shooters he could dramatically change the equation. Saying Kevin Love is playing ineffective defense is much more accurate than saying Kevin Love is an ineffective defender. Statistical support for this story from NBA.com/stats
It was in front of our face the whole time. Bosh stays in Miami... Harden leaves Westbrook and Harden and Love play together in Houston. I see the hidden message behind that video.
Defensive RPM > Advanced visual and statistical analysis of indeniable negative impact on defense from a terrible defender
People use that word hate loosely. Man get off the gas, ole buddy attack me and then went to my profile page. Another stay in your lane this is between me and old buddy. I don't believe everything a person says, especially when it comes to gossip. Why would love attack two Superstars who he might join this summer LOL. What does post count and join date has to with anything. I didn't know sh&t about this forum until my potna introduced it to me in 2013. I post on the regular because I like this site and enjoy talking about our favorite team the Houston Rockets. Yall clowns kill me trying to challenge someone allegiance around here because of the freaking join date.
LOL at people killing Love because one person stated they heard him say this and that without showing any proof. Before crucifying the dude can we not hear it from the horses mouth first. bwhahahahah but hey carry on Ladies and Gents. Now if Morey do acquire Love in a trade I wonder will it be another division in the GARM. LOH and LOF To be continued!
