The Cleveland Cavaliers still have many important decisions to make this offseason, but the most important may be what they end up doing with Kevin Love. He doesn’t fit with a team looking to tank for high draft picks, but by all indicators, the Cavs have no intention of trading him.
There are many variables that can affect Love’s future, but as fans, we simply don’t have enough information to determine what will happen at this point. What we do have are questions to seek answers to.
The first question that Cleveland must be mindful of is what does Kevin Love want? Love has been the ideal teammate ever since being traded to the Cavaliers in 2o14. He willingly accepted his role as the third scorer behind LeBron James and Kyrie Irving, and significantly changed his playing style to complement them. He signed a long-term deal as soon as he could, in order to help the front office make future moves without worrying about Love’s future with the team. He suffered through injuries and was blamed for the Cavs’ struggles, but he never complained.
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Even though it may not be the absolute best thing for the team, Cleveland owes it to Love to take his wishes into account. If he wants to be traded to a championship contender, the Cavaliers should try to make that happen. If he would rather return home to Oregon and play for the Trail Blazers, that should be something the Cavs look into as well.
However, Love has publicly stated multiple times that he wants to stay in Cleveland for the rest of his career. Now, he said that before LeBron James left to join the Los Angeles Lakers, so his preference could have changed. But as far as we know, Love wants to remain with the Cavaliers. And if that’s true, the Cavs should not trade him.
Would it be better to trade him for young players and future draft picks while putting the team in a better position to get a high draft pick this upcoming season? Probably. But the Cavaliers have stated publicly that they intend on competing for a playoff spot this season, even without James. If this is true, they will need a primary scorer, and last time Love was in that role, he averaged 26 points and 13 rebounds per game.
Love will turn 30 in September, and is in the fourth season of his five-year contract.. He is owed $24.1 million this season and will make $24.6 million in 2019-2020. If both Love and the Cavs are sold on staying together for the long run, an extension is almost certain.
The second question that must be answered is what is Love’s impact on the salary and makeup of the current team? The salary cap for the 2018-2019 season is $99 million, and Cleveland’s payroll is currently $103 million. Love’s deal takes up $24 million, or 23%, of the total payroll. He makes $5 million more than the Cavaliers’ second-highest paid player, George Hill.
Love’s prescence is essentially the only thing preventing the Cavs from being a bottom five team on paper. He is an All-Star player, who is a perfect fit for today’s NBA. He will have value if put on the trade block, but dealing him won’t give Cleveland any extra cap space, as salary must be matched in any trade if the two teams are over the salary cap, which essentially every NBA team is.
The third, and possibly most important question, is what would Love fetch in a trade? Would it even be worth dealing him? The most likely landing spots for him are championship contenders, along with teams that wish they were championship contenders. The problem with this is that those teams most likely won’t have great young players to give up, and would only be able to offer future first-round picks.
However, because these teams are in the NBA’s upper echelon, these draft picks aren’t likely to be very high. Is Love only worth two or three first-round picks that fall between 21 and 28? That seems incredibly underwhelming for a player of his caliber.
Cleveland would need to make a deal with a team that they expect to be significantly worse by the time the selections convey. But the NBA is so unpredictable that the Cavaliers would have no way of knowing which teams would drop off in three or four years.
Trading Love for future picks is a gigantic risk, because by the time the picks are given to Cleveland, the team that Love was traded to may very will still be good. After all, Love will only be 35 during the 2022-2023 season, and his game should age well because he doesn’t rely on his athleticism to beat opposing players. If he is traded to Oklahoma City for example, both Russell Westbrook and Paul George are younger than Love, meaning that the Thunder will be a solid team for a while.
The Cavs have a franchise-altering decision to make regarding Kevin Love. They need to find a balance between what’s best for the team and what Love wants.
At this point, it looks like the most likely result is that Cleveland keeps Love and tries to remain relevant behind him. However, we have no idea what Koby Altman and company are thinking right now. All we can do is wait.