Minnesota Sports Forum

I think most folks here have an appreciation for how good Kevin Love is, but we all sometimes slip into old narratives about his inability to create his own shot or play defense.

But here is the fact, which I pointed out in the other thread: We beat teams by an average of over 8 points per game while he's on the floor. Only four players in the entire NBA do better than that and three of them are on Indiana (Hibbert, George, and West). And no one can possibly make the case it's because the other four starters are carrying him. It's more like the other way around, as he pretty handily has the best On/Off numbers compared to the other four starters.

+/- isn't a perfect stat, but combine that with other individual metrics such as Win Shares (he's 4th) and PER (he's 5th) and I can confidently say that we have a top 5 or 6 player in the game. I would rank Lebron, George, Durant, and Chris Paul ahead of him. After that, it gets tough for me to clearly say anyone else is better than him.

The hardest part of re-building is over with: We have our superstar, thanks ironically enough, to Kevin McHale, the same GM that couldn't build a consistent playoff contender around Kevin Garnett in his prime. Let's hope Flip doesn't make the same mistakes.

Q12543 wrote:I think most folks here have an appreciation for how good Kevin Love is, but we all sometimes slip into old narratives about his inability to create his own shot or play defense.

But here is the fact, which I pointed out in the other thread: We beat teams by an average of over 8 points per game while he's on the floor. Only four players in the entire NBA do better than that and three of them are on Indiana (Hibbert, George, and West). And no one can possibly make the case it's because the other four starters are carrying him. It's more like the other way around, as he pretty handily has the best On/Off numbers compared to the other four starters.

+/- isn't a perfect stat, but combine that with other individual metrics such as Win Shares (he's 4th) and PER (he's 5th) and I can confidently say that we have a top 5 or 6 player in the game. I would rank Lebron, George, Durant, and Chris Paul ahead of him. After that, it gets tough for me to clearly say anyone else is better than him.

The hardest part of re-building is over with: We have our superstar, thanks ironically enough, to Kevin McHale, the same GM that couldn't build a consistent playoff contender around Kevin Garnett in his prime. Let's hope Flip doesn't make the same mistakes.

Q, I agree that people on this board (i include myself at times on this) under-appreciate Love. With all the things that Love brings to the table (scoring, range scoring, rebounding, passing, high BBIQ, etc...) he is pretty easily a top 7 or 8 player in the NBA. I would put him closer to 5 or 6.

We are lucky to have him to build around.

Building around him just creates the added challenge of identifying a "game closer" in addition to our most significant star. It would be nice if he could do all the things that he does......and closed out close games.

Probably until the Wolves identify that "game closer" Love will get complained about more than is justified.





l

Love is a great player, I'll even agree you could use the term superstar, that said I would still not hesitate to trade him for the right price. My basic argument here is he is incredibly valuable because he is a superstar (which is why I believe we could get a lot back for him) but not all superstars are created equal. I'll use Chris Paul and the Clippers as an example.

Using PER to compare players (if they're within a point I'll call them equal): Love = CP3, Martin = Griffin, Pek = Redick, Rubio = Jordan, Brewer is 4 points better than Dudley, and Cunningham is 4 points worse than Crawford as the first guy off the bench. Basically this is to simply show the individual players make the teams approximately equal. At the current Clippers would be firmly in the playoffs and we would be lucky to even be in the playoff picture.

So what's the difference? I'd say it's the superstar. CP3 is consistent throughout the game but can take his play to the next level when the game is on the line which leads the team to victory. Love is an incredibly consistent who can help keep a team in a game but down the stretch against good teams he is unable to significantly raise his level of play and lead the team to a win.

The Rage Monster wrote:

Using PER to compare players (if they're within a point I'll call them equal): Love = CP3, Martin = Griffin, Pek = Redick, Rubio = Jordan, Brewer is 4 points better than Dudley, and Cunningham is 4 points worse than Crawford as the first guy off the bench. Basically this is to simply show the individual players make the teams approximately equal. At the current Clippers would be firmly in the playoffs and we would be lucky to even be in the playoff picture.

So what's the difference? I'd say it's the superstar. CP3 is consistent throughout the game but can take his play to the next level when the game is on the line which leads the team to victory. Love is an incredibly consistent who can help keep a team in a game but down the stretch against good teams he is unable to significantly raise his level of play and lead the team to a win.

Excellent post (especially the part that I kept :thumb: ) This is probably what I meant to say. This sort of begs the question........does a team with a superstar also need a "closer"? Maybe we do.

Our record would be on par with the Clippers if our bench wasn't being beaten by 15.2 ppg.

Love has closed close games before. The problem right now is that he is the only threat. Ricky can penetrate but not finish, Corey can't create, Pek needs to be passed the ball deep, JJ is playing terribly all-around, and K-Mart is shooting badly. All the other team has to do is keep the ball away from Love and it's over. There's two ways to fix this. Either Kevin Martin has to start shooting well again, or Ricky has to start finishing better at the basket. I think Budinger coming back will help lessen the load a bit on Martin and allow him to not force as much, but that's far from a sure thing.

Hopefully Bud gets back soon and we can see where the team is at. If he doesn't help, either Shabazz/Shved needs to step up or a trade needs to be made to bring in a bench scorer.

2 years ago... Love was in line to finish in the top 4 for Win Shares. (until he got injured late in the year.)

For what that metric is worth... Love's assault on Win Shares comes with some amazing historical stats...

- Love was the only player in 2011 in the top 20 for WS from a team with a losing record
- Love would have been only the 2nd top 5 guy from a losing team in more than 20 years. (Elton Brand finished top 5... but his team won 40 games.
- The Wolves won only 17 games.
- Love followed it up by finishing 4th the very next season... despite missing almost 20% of the season... on a 26 - 40 team.

So, in summary... call it a gimmick stat or not... what Love did was unprecedented. So, either he's the best stat padding player on a crappy team in a couple of decades... or is producing at a prolific rate while playing mostly with dogs for years now.

The Rage Monster wrote:Love is a great player, I'll even agree you could use the term superstar, that said I would still not hesitate to trade him for the right price. My basic argument here is he is incredibly valuable because he is a superstar (which is why I believe we could get a lot back for him) but not all superstars are created equal. I'll use Chris Paul and the Clippers as an example.

Using PER to compare players (if they're within a point I'll call them equal): Love = CP3, Martin = Griffin, Pek = Redick, Rubio = Jordan, Brewer is 4 points better than Dudley, and Cunningham is 4 points worse than Crawford as the first guy off the bench. Basically this is to simply show the individual players make the teams approximately equal. At the current Clippers would be firmly in the playoffs and we would be lucky to even be in the playoff picture.

So what's the difference? I'd say it's the superstar. CP3 is consistent throughout the game but can take his play to the next level when the game is on the line which leads the team to victory. Love is an incredibly consistent who can help keep a team in a game but down the stretch against good teams he is unable to significantly raise his level of play and lead the team to a win.

Rage, Good post. Guys who can play with the ball in their hands are inherently advantaged in end-of-game situations. That's why I agree, CP3 is a better player than Love, even though PER and WS have them roughly the same. Same with LeBron, George, and Durant. These guys you can isolate on the wing or have them be the ball-handler in a pick and roll situations. Paul absolutely destroyed us when we played the Clips because they just pick and rolled us to death, and he made the right decision every single time.

Still, no one is going to trade us one of those guys for Love. And getting two good players for one superstar almost never works out. It's just super, super hard to find players as good as Love. He's not the perfect superstar, but he's what we've got. With the right mix of talent around him, we could make a very deep playoff run.

Q12543 wrote:

The Rage Monster wrote:Love is a great player, I'll even agree you could use the term superstar, that said I would still not hesitate to trade him for the right price. My basic argument here is he is incredibly valuable because he is a superstar (which is why I believe we could get a lot back for him) but not all superstars are created equal. I'll use Chris Paul and the Clippers as an example.

Using PER to compare players (if they're within a point I'll call them equal): Love = CP3, Martin = Griffin, Pek = Redick, Rubio = Jordan, Brewer is 4 points better than Dudley, and Cunningham is 4 points worse than Crawford as the first guy off the bench. Basically this is to simply show the individual players make the teams approximately equal. At the current Clippers would be firmly in the playoffs and we would be lucky to even be in the playoff picture.

So what's the difference? I'd say it's the superstar. CP3 is consistent throughout the game but can take his play to the next level when the game is on the line which leads the team to victory. Love is an incredibly consistent who can help keep a team in a game but down the stretch against good teams he is unable to significantly raise his level of play and lead the team to a win.

Rage, Good post. Guys who can play with the ball in their hands are inherently advantaged in end-of-game situations. That's why I agree, CP3 is a better player than Love, even though PER and WS have them roughly the same. Same with LeBron, George, and Durant. These guys you can isolate on the wing or have them be the ball-handler in a pick and roll situations. Paul absolutely destroyed us when we played the Clips because they just pick and rolled us to death, and he made the right decision every single time.

Still, no one is going to trade us one of those guys for Love. And getting two good players for one superstar almost never works out. It's just super, super hard to find players as good as Love. He's not the perfect superstar, but he's what we've got. With the right mix of talent around him, we could make a very deep playoff run.

It took the franchise 25 years to get to its 2nd franchise player.

We can wait a few more years (decade(s))for the "perfect" one, right?

Wait wait wait. Kevin Love isn't a star though.

Lmao you people kill me. He plays great (40/14), people jump back on the wagon. He has a 20/10 game one day and all of a sudden he's not. Make up your minds.

Camden wrote:Wait wait wait. Kevin Love isn't a star though.

Lmao you people kill me. He plays great (40/14), people jump back on the wagon. He has a 20/10 game one day and all of a sudden he's not. Make up your minds.

Still not as good as Ricky Rubio...