Kevin Love – Cleveland Cavaliers
Since joining the Cavaliers ahead of the 2014-15 season, Kevin Love has consistently been one of their best players and was a big part of the Cavaliers 2015-16 championship team. In Cleveland, Love has also been to two All-Star games in 2017 and 2018 and was rewarded for his loyalty last year.
Before the 2019-20 season, the Cavaliers agreed to a four-year, $120M contract with Love since they did not have anybody else to spend the money on and wanted to keep him a part of their organization for years to come. Since giving him this contract though, a lot has changed roster wise in Cleveland.
Collin Sexton has emerged as a potential star player for the Cavs and they traded for former All-Star center Anre Drummond at the trade deadline. With a solid balance of youthful talent and veteran talent, the Cavaliers have a decent roster, but are still in no shape to compete in the Eastern Conference.
As a result, they may look to trade Kevin Love elsewhere to free up cap space and continue acquiring young talent, which is why he could end up in the purple and gold and reunite with his friend, LeBron James.
Over the course of his 12-year career in the NBA, Kevin Love has averaged 18.2 points, 11.1 rebounds and has shot over 37% from three-point range as a power-forward. His shooting attributes and rebounding abilities have made him a very valuable trade target across the NBA and he could fit in perfectly in the Lakers system.
With Anthony Davis controlling the frontcourt for the Lakers and LeBron James being the focal point of the offense, the biggest thing the Lakers could continue adding is shooting and scoring depth, which is exactly what Love can bring to the table. Adding another high-level scorer like Kevin Love makes this Lakers’ offense virtually unstoppable and gives them one of the best rebounding frontcourts in the NBA as well.
Love’s contract situation could ultimately be the factor that prevents this trade from happening, as he is owed $31.2M this season. If the Lakers were to put together a trade package for Love, it would likely be a multi-team trade in which the Lakers would be forced to trade Jared Dudley, Markieff Morris, Kentavious-Caldwell Pope, Alex Caruso, Alfonzo McKinnie and Kyle Kuzma OR trade either Dennis Schroder or Montrezl Harrell and a couple of these players to free up the necessary cap space.
Bringing in $31.2M to an organization that is already $1.7M over the tax is extremely difficult to do, but if the Lakers really wanted to bring in Love, they could hypothetically make it work, it would just take a lot of teams on the receiving end of this trade and the Lakers to trade one of their bigger contracts.
It seems unrealistic for this trade to actually work given the amount of players and depth Los Angeles would have to trade away, but adding Kevin Love to this team would be incredible in terms of how much firepower the Lakers would end up having in their title defense run.
