Kevin Love extension: Significant risk, but will that be the Cavaliers’ problem?
By Sam Vecenie Jul 24, 2018 6
If you’ve been listening closely to rumblings out of Cleveland since the departure of LeBron James, news of a Kevin Love extension shouldn’t come as a surprise. The Cavaliers have been clear that they have no intention of bottoming out in the same way they did the first time James left in 2010, when they won an average of 21.3 games over the next three years and won three NBA Draft lotteries in 2011, 2013, and 2014.
Rather than trying to build through high draft picks and cap space, the Cavs are going to try to go with more of a “re-tool” than a full on rebuild. If that’s the route they want to go, signing Love, who had one guarantee year remaining at $24.1 million and one player option year remaining at $25.6 million, to an extension makes sense. The numbers, though, were always the question. Finally, our answer came on Tuesday, when Love signed to a four-year, $120-million extension. That means the Cavs are committed to Love for the next five years at $145 million, counting this upcoming season.
Structurally, based off of the salary cap and reporting by ESPN, he’ll play this season on his $24.1 number, decline his player option in 2019-20, then see his salary rise by the full 120 percent allowed under the collective bargaining agreement’s extension rules in 2019-20. From there, his salary will jump by the standard eight percent raise in 2020-21, stay at that number for the 2021-22 season, then decrease for the 2022-23 season. The full numbers are mapped out below.
This is a complicated contract to discuss, value-wise. Really, it comes down to two questions. Is Love worth this contract? And how does this affect Cleveland’s future flexibility? Let’s break down those two aspects.
Is Kevin Love worth five years, $145 million?
Ultimately, this is the most important question. If Love is worth the contract, then he’s a positive asset and someone who can either be built around or traded around the NBA in return for valuable commodities.
Given that this contract runs for Love’s 30- to 34-year-old seasons, I think there’s a lot of reason for skepticism that he will wind up proving himself as worth this contract. Let’s talk about the positives in regard to Love’s game first, though.
Love is coming off of his most efficient season ever. He averaged 17.6 points and 9.3 rebounds playing as the secondary option for the Cavaliers next to James and he was among the best second bananas in the NBA. Along with James Harden, Kevin Durant, and James, Love was one of just four players in the NBA to post a 61.4 true-shooting percentage to pair with at least a 25 percent usage rate.
Largely, that efficiency came from career-high jump-shooting marks. He hit 41.5 percent of his 5.6 3-point attempts per game, while setting a career-high shooting 88 percent from the line. Given that Love has seen basically the same percentage of open shots in each of his four years with the Cavaliers (about 61 to 63 percent of his shots have been classified as either “open” or “wide open,” per NBA.com), Love seems to have expanded his game and become, if not an elite shooter from distance, then certainly just below that mark.
He’s done all of this while also maintaining his ability as a high-level defensive rebounder. Love’s 29.8 defensive rebounding rate was 10th in the NBA last season, with his more advanced metrics lining up nicely behind it. He finished sixth among all big men in defensive rebounding chance percentage — a statistic measuring how many rebounds you gather when you’re actually in the area for a rebound — and 15th in defensive rebounding chances per minute. The two main skills that Love brought from Minnesota (scoring and rebounding) have held up in Cleveland through four years.
The question, however, remains: will those numbers hold up over the next five? And will he, as the centerpiece of the Cavs next season, return to an approximation of the Love who saw so much success in Minnesota? The latter point is something I’m a bit more skeptical on.
Last season, Love played fewer minutes per game — 28.0 — than in any season outside of his rookie year. Almost certainly, that helped keep him a bit fresher throughout the year. It’ll be harder to keep that minute load under control this season with him as the No. 1 option. In that vein, it seems unlikely that Love will be able to put up the same level of efficiency he posted last season.
Another part of this equation? Percentage of open shots. While Love has seen nearly two-thirds of his shots qualify as “open” over the course of the last two years, it’s unlikely he’ll see a similar number with more defensive attention paid to him as the primary scoring option. We have those numbers running back to Love’s final season in Minnesota. During that year, only about 50 percent of Love’s shots were classified as “open.” Instead of posting efficient, star-level numbers at 25 as a primary option — something he was remarkably successful at in Minnesota — he’ll be asked to do so at 30.
Historically, that’s been a big ask for players of Love’s type. During their age-30 seasons or older, only six players have posted at least 25 points and 10 rebounds on a league-average true-shooting percentage — Shaquille O’Neal, Wilt Chamberlain, David Robinson, Hakeem Olajuwon, Kareem Abdul-Jabbar, and Karl Malone. For a player of Love’s caliber — something resembling the ball-park of Hall-of-Fame-quality, but not in the class of the top-20 players ever — it’s unheard of.
Even reducing the number to 20 points and 10 rebounds a game on league-average efficiency during age-30 or over seasons, you still only add Charles Barkley, Elgin Baylor, Patrick Ewing, Kevin Garnett, Elvin Hayes, Moses Malone, and Bob Pettit — all of whom would qualify as top-40 players ever. Love is unquestionably an excellent player, but the Cavs are paying him to do something that a player of his caliber just hasn’t done. That’s not to say it’s impossible, but it would be fair to qualify it as unlikely. And that 30-year-old season is before the extension aspect even kicks in. Given normal aging curves, the deal could only get worse from there.
That’s the positive side of Love’s game, too. We have yet to talk about the defensive side, where Love has been — at the very least — a negative contributor for a while now.
Defensive rebounding, unfortunately, only goes so far. He’s been a big part of the Cavs’ 21st- and 29th-ranked defenses each of the last two years, struggling with pick-and-roll coverage and rim protection. Among the 36 players in the league to contest at least four shots at the basket per game, according to NBA.com, Love finished 35th in field goal percentage against on those shots, allowing opponents to shoot 65.7 percent against him at the basket.
Opponents shot, on average, 5.3 percent better when Love was the primary defender. In general, opponents took 12 shots per game against him, shooting 52.9 percent — 300th out of the 304 players in the NBA who had at least five shots taken against them per game in such situations. The surrounding players in that metric aren’t exactly pretty.
Finally, Love’s injury history needs to be mentioned. This past year, he missed 21 games in February and March due to a fractured hand. During the 2016-17 season, he missed six more weeks due to a knee surgery to remove loose materials from his left knee. The Kelly Olynyk incident cost him a large portion of the 2015 playoffs due to a dislocated shoulder.
Multiple fractures in his right hand cost him a large portion of the 2012-13 season with Minnesota. A left groin injury cost him the end of 2010-11 season, and another broken left hand injury cost him a portion of his sophomore season. None of these injuries particularly speak to long-term muscular or structural issues, but the propensity for him to break bones does seem to be real, and it’s something that should be placed into the calculation.
With this contract, the Cavaliers are essentially paying Love to continue at a high-level, star-quality pace for five seasons. Or, at the very least, they’re hoping he can deliver surplus value in the first couple of years of the deal, followed by what will likely be down years. Given past precedent, I’m not sure that should be expected.
The Cavs would have likely been better off offering a two-year max extension similar to the one the Spurs offered LaMarcus Aldridge as opposed to a four-year extension. That kind of deal would have preserved potential trade value by keeping Love under team control for the next three seasons, kept the team competitive moving forward, while also mitigating the downside risk both for themselves and for other potential trade partners.
Would Love have accepted such a deal? Maybe not. But if that were the case, they could have explored trade options for him and started anew immediately. This is where Cleveland’s strategy and mine would be differ. I understand why they want to go a different route, given how tough things were the last time James left town. I also understand that Love’s market may not have been particularly strong right now. Still, this contract has significant downside even with salary cap increases slated to come in the next two years. It’s worth wondering how that affects both the Cavs going forward, as well as their potential to move the contract if they decide to shift into a different direction.
How does this affect Cleveland’s future?
Well, for now, it ties Love to the Cavaliers for five years at the cap figures projected above. From a short-term perspective, it’s worth noting the potential effect that this decision has on the Cavaliers’ 2019 first-round pick. The Cavaliers currently owe their first rounder next year to the Atlanta Hawks if it falls outside of the top-10 picks. That protection stands through the 2020 draft. If the pick has not conveyed by that point, it then becomes the Cavs’ 2021 and 2022 second-round picks.
That makes the opportunity cost of keeping Love on this year’s roster as opposed to potentially moving him to confirm that they keep those picks real. Given Cleveland’s standing in the league, it’s not impossible that the Cavs end up missing the playoffs this year, and also have to convey their first-round pick. Sure, the 2019 draft is not seen as particularly strong, but the potential cost of losing a cost-controlled first rounder to help them re-tool must be accounted for.
Long-term, this move doesn’t really harm Cleveland’s flexibility all that much from a cap perspective. The Cavs have about $80 million committed to Love, Tristan Thompson, Jordan Clarkson, Collin Sexton, Cedi Osman, and Ante Zizic (as well as small guarantees to larger contracts for George Hill, J.R. Smith, and Kyle Korver) in 2019-20. They’ll also have a potential cap hold (or extension number, based on reports) for Larry Nance Jr., as well as potentially Rodney Hood if they sign him to a multi-year guaranteed contract. It was always unlikely that the team would use significant space next summer.
But in the summer of 2020, the team still figures to have quite a bit of space. Counting the Love deal, Sexton’s third-year option, Zizic’s fourth-year option, and a $5.5 million cap hold for Osman, the team figures to have well over $50 million in cap space regardless of what it gives to Nance and Hood, and could even have as much as $70 million given reported potential salary cap increases. Even with this extension, that remains the summer the Cavs need to knock it out of the park. It represents their best opportunity to be flexible and add talent to the roster.
Another way to add talent to this roster would also be by trading Love, something that shouldn’t be ruled out over the course of the next two summers.
Next summer, owing the salary cap increase and contracts that will get off the books, 11 teams are currently slated to have enough space (near the max) to trade for Love’s contract without attaching any salaries. In 2020, the number is currently slated to be even higher (although that will change after contracts are handed out next year). For teams over the next two summers who miss out on big-time free agents, Love might represent an interesting way for them to still take a step forward while also seeing the Cavaliers get something of value in return.
There are a few teams who could be interested, based off of the talent they have already accumulated. The Philadelphia 76ers missed out on getting to use their cap space this summer, with next summer currently representing their last chance to add talent via free agency before extensions for Ben Simmons and Joel Embiid engulf their cap sheet. Does Love make sense as a floor-spacing 4 in-between those two, given how well they could insulate him defensively?
The Utah Jazz have always made a lot of sense for him, due to their unselfish offensive style and defensive strength inside. They also enjoy playing with two big men, something a team acquiring Love would have to do if it wants to stay reliable on defense. Placing him between Rudy Gobert and Donovan Mitchell makes a lot of sense.
Indiana has similar long-term pieces in place with Victor Oladipo and Myles Turner, and could see Love as a risk worth taking. The Clippers are star-hunting next summer after dealing all of Blake Griffin, DeAndre Jordan, and Chris Paul over the last 14 months. Could they try to acquire Love as a secondary piece to a higher-profile star to bring him back to his UCLA roots?
All of this is dependent upon Love maintaining his value next season, though. He needs to have a monster year, so that the Cavs either make the playoffs or have the ability to move him due to his contract being seen as a long-term asset. Ultimately, I’m skeptical of such a situation, and worried that this deal will be seen as toxic around the NBA due to the lack of value in the back-end.
As we learned with the Clippers’ Griffin deal this season, though, it only takes one team seeing Love as an asset for the Cavaliers to be able to get off of it. If Love can keep producing early on in this deal, someone will likely bail the Cavaliers out before the arrangement gets all that bad. Because based off of past precedent, this deal is going to get bad for someone.
Whether or not it ends up being an anchor on the Cavaliers’ future or another team’s depends on just how strong Love’s immediate performance is as their No. 1 option this season.
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