FanPost

The Big Al-Kevin Love Breakdown


As I was doing some research this morning regarding next year's wolves roster and player situational PER's I noticed something unusual. Here are the PF and C PER stats for Love and Jefferson last year for both offense and defense (PER given up to opponents)


Position PER Analysis
Position Player Offense Defense Net PER
PF Love 17.60 (19.10) (1.50)
PF Jefferson 17.90 (13.50) 4.40
C Love 22.60 (19.50) 3.10
C Jefferson 26.30 (19.20) 7.10

Now, if we stick to traditional offensive and defensive positions, we get two options

Player Position Net PER Position Net PER
Love PF (1.50) C 3.10
Jefferson C 7.10 PF 4.40
5.60 7.50

Either option doesn't scream great interior presence. But the more I looked at the first table I started to notice that both Love/Al had very similar PF offensive numbers and C Defensive numbers. So who says that each player has to play one position for the whole game at both ends of the floor? It has been widely speculated that if Rubio and Flynn were on the court together that Rubio would guard SG and not PG, so...

Player Position Off PER Position Def PER Net PER
Love PF 17.60 C (19.50) (1.90)
Jefferson C 26.30 PF (13.50) 12.80
43.90 10.90

At the end of the day, Big Al is a much more talented player and what we are really looking for to complement Al is someone who is willing to be a complementary player. Does anyone doubt that Love would be more than willing to get posterized every once and a while if it meant they won more games? He strikes me as the type of player that would gladly go out there or even play a sixth man role, which makes him a very valuable team asset, but not an All Star.

I would theorize that with the proper perimeter defense that could reduce the amount of time opposing PF/C's have to work against Al and Love, their defensive numbers would be much better. This only makes me feel better about the Hollins acquisition, because I feel like the only time he will have to play (when Al gets fully back from his injury) is against the super athletic PF and Cs. And lets face, there just aren't very many of those.