Kevin Love: The reason behind the Cavs defensive woes

By George Efkarpides /info@eurohoops.net

Kevin Love is an outstanding player. Few would disagree. The new look Cavs decided to go small and start Love at the five which is a pretty good idea, offensively.

What’s interesting is how he found out he’s the team’s starting center.

“Kind of a funny thing the third day at practice. I had asked about a certain play on the defensive end The different coverages of the four and the five man. And, Lebron kind of stopped me and goes,” You know you’re going to be starting at the five, right?” So, I kind of looked at him and I didn’t really fully understand that that was going to be the case. Not that I would of trained or done something differently I would just have started to wrap my head around it more.”

Playing “small ball” is trending in the NBA and almost everyone is trying to do that but in order to do so successfully the correct pieces are essential.

Adding Jae Crowder as a perimeter defender was a key move but playing him and Kevin Love as “Bigs” has resulted in horrible team defense.

The Cavaliers are dead last in defensive rating (113.00) and 27^th in OPPG (114.2)

Teams continue to put Love in the pick n roll and thrive of it.

In their impressive win over the Wizards, they still gave up 122 points and the only reason they won is because of LeBron’s heroic efforts.

There are massive defensive faults that must be addressed either internally or via trade.

In conclusion, the Cavs need a big man to give them some quality minutes and with Thompson out, it might be a good idea to start giving Zizic some action.