Kevin Love – Cleveland Cavaliers
Back in 2014, when LeBron James decided to come back to the Cleveland Cavaliers, the organization did everything they could to surround him with enough talent to contend for a championship, which is when they brought in Kevin Love from the Minnesota Timberwolves. The Cavaliers made the NBA Finals in the first season with their new core but ultimately fell to the Golden State Warriors.
They did make it back to the Finals in 2016 and became the first team to come back from a 3-1 deficit and win the NBA Finals. Kevin Love was finally an NBA champion and the city of Cleveland finally broke through when the Cavaliers won their first NBA title.
After trading away Kyrie Irving to the Celtics in 2017 and after LeBron fulfilled his promise to the Cavaliers, departing for the Los Angeles Lakers in 2018, Kevin Love was the last man standing on a Cleveland Cavaliers team that was heading towards yet another rebuild.
Over the last few years, Love has been extremely loyal to the Cavaliers organization as a result, they rewarded him with a four-year, $120M contract extension ahead of the 2019-20 season. Now, looking back on this move, it may have hurt the Cavaliers’ chances of trading Kevin Love to speed up the rebuild process.
The Cavaliers are in no position to win and make noise in the playoffs for at least 3-5 years so it would make sense to ship Kevin Love off to a team where he can not only contend for a championship but in return, give the Cavaliers numerous draft assets.
The only problem with Kevin Love’s current situation is that there are very few teams who would financially be able to make this kind of trade work. Kevin Love is owed $31.3M this upcoming year and with two, $30M+ years after this one, whoever is wanting to acquire Kevin Love will be investing in him for the next three seasons. For a young, playoff contending team, this may not be a bad idea.
Kevin Love averaged 17.6 points, 9.8 rebounds, and shot over 37% from three-point range last season so why wouldn’t a championship contender want to invest in him to help bring them a championship over the next three years? Sure, the financial restraints this puts on any organization would hurt their chances in free agency, but pairing Kevin Love up with two NBA All-Star talents makes any team a legit threat to win a championship.
One team that comes to mind in this situation is the Los Angeles Clippers. They are in a situation where they have one of the older rosters in the league and have some bigger contracts that could be moved to bring in Love in efforts to win a championship now.
Lou Williams and Patrick Beverly are both owed $8M and $13.3M respectively this season and after signing Marcus Morris and Serge Ibaka in the offseason, Los Angeles would have to make this trade around the trade deadline of the upcoming season if they were interested. This is just one example of a championship-contending team who could make this kind of trade possible.
Kevin Love has proven to be a great third scoring option over the course of his 12-year career and deserves another chance to contend for a title. This will not happen in Cleveland during the remainder of his career, which is why it would make sense for both parties to move on from each other. If Love wants the chance to win another championship in his career, while still playing at a high level, he needs to request a trade from the Cavs.
