Minnesota Sports Forum

thedoper wrote:Blatt said last night Love is not a max player. This is getting good.

LST that is a funny comment about the Cavs being the Wolves. I remember getting into a discussion about Kyrie v Rubio and their value to wins here after they had squared of on TNT last year. It seems they have almost an identical influence on wins playing next to Love. Lebron should have just come to the Wolves to play with Love.

Why on earth would Blatt say that even if he is arguably correct??!! I'm predicting that Blatt will be terminated before the all-star break. Whether the Cavs' woes are his fault or not, the team should be performing better and Blatt will ultimately be held accountable as the head coach. Gilbert is not a patient man and any patience he has will be exhausted soon by his underachieving team.

As for Love, no one should be surprised. Kevin Love was, is and always will be a very good complementary player and nothing more. He doesn't have the game or temperament to carry his team or make others around him better. We can recall several years ago that, when Ricky went down with his knee injury, the Wolves season nose-dived even though Love remained on the floor and healthy for quite a while after Ricky's injury. Small sample size, but early this season before Ricky went down, the Wolves looked at least as good as the Cavs.

So I'm looking forward to the Wolves match-up against the Cavs the end of this month. I hope Blatt is still there by then. And as much as I'd like to see LeBron play in person, I hope he's still out. Fortunately for the Cavs, playing the Wolves means playing a team worse than they are defensively. Perhaps Flip and Blatt were both absent the day they were teaching defense in coaching class.

As for the Cavs, Blatt's days are numbered unless they get on a huge role soon after LeBron's return. That's possible since LeBron is good enough to have that sort of impact on his team. I'll go a step further and predict that the Cavs hire George Karl to replace Blatt. You heard it here first. :)

The quote I saw actually said something more along the line of "Love is not playing like a max player, yet". Which is a bit different than what is being portrayed here.

Maybe Adelman should have been more like Blatt and not coddled Love so much!

I think the Cavs will be fine once they get Lebron and Shumpert healthy. Mozgov is going to be a good rim protector behind them and Shumpert is a big defensive upgrade to Waiters in terms of effort. JR is a better bench player than anyone they had and TT is still a decent bench big. That's 7 guys that belong in a rotation so they should be better when they get healthy.

60WinTim wrote:The quote I saw actually said something more along the line of "Love is not playing like a max player, yet". Which is a bit different than what is being portrayed here.

Maybe Adelman should have been more like Blatt and not coddled Love so much!

I'm sure you meant if Blatt was more like Adleman. Blatt looks more like Kurt Rambis then any good coach

60WinTim wrote:The quote I saw actually said something more along the line of "Love is not playing like a max player, yet". Which is a bit different than what is being portrayed here.

Maybe Adelman should have been more like Blatt and not coddled Love so much!

He asked the question back to the reporters saying, "Well, Kev's not a max player yet, is he?"

http://espn.go.com/nba/story/_/id/12153672/david-blatt-cleveland-cavaliers-tonight-not-step-forward

Lebron just pushed Blatt out of the way, legit pushed.

https://vine.co/v/ODjKdzzDMnO

What a great night, Mo 52, Wolves win, Blatt pushed, I'll go to bed happy

Another Cavs loss even with LeBron back putting up 33 points. Note that Love was 1-5 performance from behind the arc. Also note the following report on tonight's game:

Cavaliers: Kevin Love was on the bench throughout Cleveland's big rally and didn't play in the fourth quarter. ... James made 5 of 7 shots in the fourth quarter, the rest of the team 4 of 15. ... Irving had two in the first half on 1-for-4 shooting. .. The Cavs are 1-9 overall without James this season, 18-11 with him.

Other Love related stats worth to mention about Suns game:

He was -20, which was by far worst plus minus number in Cavs team. Irving was 2nd worst with -10.
And of course Love's opponent counter part Markieff Morris scored career high 35 points with 15/21 field goal shooting.

Other power forwards that have had at least season high nights against Cavs and Love this season:
Amir Johnson season high 27 points with 11/15 FG.
Ryan Anderson season high 32 points with 11/19 FG (his 2nd highest scoring game 30 pts is also against Cavs)
Boris Diaw 19 points with 8/14 FG was his season high quite long time

Great stats, as usual, mikkeman. I still think Love gets way too much of a pass for his ridiculously poor defense, although the national media is starting to catch up to him. Blatt knows though, as demonstrated by his benching Love in Q4. Blatt really needed this win, just like Flip did last night, and who they played in Q4 speaks volumes.

On the positive side, the Cavs are getting better...finally kept a loss in single digits!

The Cavs scored 21 points in the fourth. 21! You're not going to win a game scoring that in the fourth coming from behind unless you have a Chicago level of defense which they don't even have without Love. They have no idea what they are doing and Blatt is in over his head. They're so focused on the defensive side of the ball that their offense is terrible and they have Kyrie, Lebron and Love on that team. Just like Miami spent their first year together focusing on defense and showing clear offensive struggles, the Cavs should be spending their time on offense because a Kyrie, Lebron, Love trio should give your team 115 a night. It also hasn't been mentioned, but Kyrie and Lebron had 13 of the team's 19 turnovers last night. And yet it is Love's fault they lost when he didn't even play in the 4th quarter. You can't blame a guy who rode the bench for 12 straight minutes down the stretch for a loss.