How impressive has Kevin Love been this year? Here's a list of players under the age of 23 who have posted a single-season PER above 22 and a rebound percentage over 17: Tim Duncan (twice). Chris Bosh. Elton Brand. Terry Cummings. Kevin Love. That's it. And of the five, Love's rebound percentage is by far the highest.
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Was the benching his fault?
Plus, he’s playing 30m a game. I’d argue that the only thing that doesn’t make him a starter is that he’s not on the court for the tip-off.
Yeah, you can arrange the statistics to tell many stories, but the man is producing.
Yeah...
it’s hard to read stuff like that and not chuckle a little bit. This team is so bad, and Love hasn’t really stood out above the rest — at least not consistently. Nobody is having a “good” year, let alone an historically great year.
What does "standing out" mean?
He obviously “stands out” statistically. Especially with respect to rebounds, where he “stands out” to an absurd degree.
PER says that he “stands out” amongst the other wolves according to the linked article.
He Clearly “stands out” according to WP48. http://www.wagesofwins.com/TWolves610910.html
The team is losing in spite of Kevin Love, just like the Lakers used to lose in spite of Kobe Bryant, or how the Heat are losing in spite of Dwayne Wade. The other talent on this team is at a rarely reached level of awfulness by every available metric.
But see...
When Kobe’s teams “lost” in spite of him, they still made the playoffs in every season but 1 and won 38 games in the year that they didn’t.
When D Wade’s teams “lost” in spite of him – other than a year when he was plagued by injuries – his teams all made the playoffs.
When Love’s teams “lost” in spite of him, his team has the worst record in the Western Conference. It’s not really a fair comparison.
But what about...
The three seasons where the Wolves didn’t make the playoffs with KG (including, I might add, 33 and 32 win seasons in KG’s last two years here)?
The primary problem is that the Wolves have just two above average performers (Love and AL) who basically split minutes at their ideal position. The rest of the main rotation consists of a handful of below average players who might be 8th men on a playoff caliber club. They’re terrible. They’re beyond terrible. And as we learned with KG in 05-06 and 06-07, even a very very good player can’t always prevent an incredibly talent-depleted team from being terrible.
Exactly my point
KG, with a god awful team, won at least 30+ games. There’s a huge difference between winning 30+ games and winning less than 20. If Love were the “historically good” player that some people think he is, we should be seeing more evidence of it in the win column
Sounds like arbitrary line drawing...
I thought it was that great players always take their teams to the playoffs—now suddenly the magic number is 30 games?
First off, the Wolves with Love this year are 11-30, versus 3-17 without. Over a full season, Love and the Wolves win 22 games.
Second, Love’s value is undermined by only playing him 29 min/game. During those three bad years, KG never played less than 38 min/game. You’d basically be cutting into almost 25% of KG’s minutes on those bad teams by playing him 29 min/game.
Finally—yeah, maybe Love isn’t Kobe/KG/Wade today—but the point is that what’s he is doing is pretty impressive for a 21-year old forward playing in his second season. Being on a terrible team doesn’t change that.
I never drew a line
but 30 wins is a decent season. Less than 20 wins is a terrible season. That’s the distinction.
And yes, Love isn’t play that many minutes, which actually helps prove the point. If Love were really as good as people think he is, no way he is coming off of the bench.
It's still drawing a line...
The determination of a terrible season should be based on reasonable expectations of the talent assembled. Less than expected? Bad season. Better than expected? Reason for optimism. Saying 30 wins is decent is completely arbitrary. So is saying 20 wins is terrible.
Jalen Rose's prediction for this team
“With a healthy Jefferson, don’t be surprised if they beat out the Suns and/or Clips to make the playoffs. Sessions is a stud and will be the league’s most improved player. Love will average a double-double. Rambis put together one of my favorite coaching staffs (Laimbeer/Theus).”
I suggest relativism is a more logical basis for expectations...
And you come back with Jalen Rose?
that doesn't help prove your point at all
there could be many reasons why he’s not starting/ getting more minutes, ranging from helping the team win more games by strengthening the second unit, to tanking by limiting the minutes of our most productive player.
Other than tanking
none of those reasons make any sense if Love is as historically good as people are claiming he is. Imagine last year’s Thunder benching Kevin Durant or this year’s Heat benching D-Wade (for non-injury related reasons). It wouldn’t happen. And while I don’t think Rambis is a great coach, he’s not that stupid.
In the later part of the 07-08 season...
I saw D-Wade at Target Center for the first time. That team had the league’s worst record, and finished with something like 14 wins. He looked unbelievable that night, and the Wolves still won. In fact, if I remember right, they won behind a big game from none other than Mr. Rashad McCants. In other words, we must have been playing a terrible team, and yet it was obvious how great Dwyane Wade was, nonetheless.
That’s not the feeling I get when I watch this Wolves team. They are as bad as that Heat team, but they don’t have a superstar playing next to 4 bums.
KG's first two seasons:
95-6: 26-56
96-7: 40-42
By contrast, Love’s first two years:
08-9: 24-58
09-10: 14-47
The Wolves had at least some serious talent around KG when he arrived. When Garnett made the All Star team as a sophomore, it was as an alternate; Tom Gugliotta was already on the team ahead of him. The Wolves had all-time knucklehead but glowing talent in J.R. Rider on their roster, and then Marbs of course. Not the deepest teams, but they had some talent.
If you were comparing Love as a mature 28-year-old to the 32-win KG teams, that would be fair.
"It has come to the editor’s attention that the Herald-Leader neglected to cover the civil rights movement. We regret the omission."
Well, to be precise
Love didn’t play the first 18 games. His Wolves this year are 12-31, not 14-47.
Growing my own "Darko-stache" since last Monday.
good point
they are basically on pace for the same relative record…just with worse parts (arguably).
A Darko Fan since 2010!
by TheEvilProfessor on Mar 3, 2010 5:07 PM CST up reply actions
KG in his prime was better than Love. But KG at 21 wasn't better than Love [Love turned 21 last Sept.] . If Love played with the players KG played with, Love would have many more wins also.
Even in KG’s last few seasons here he was playing with veterans which is always better than playing with young players and rookies.
by Kevin Love Jefferson on Mar 3, 2010 9:07 PM CST up reply actions
By what measure?? KG at his prime was much better than Love at 21, but KG at 21 wasn't as good as KG at his prime.
Age 21 stats for each (after KG’s 3rd year and Love’s 2nd year)
I’ve shown stats where Love is better at the top and where KG is better below. Love has more of the important categories in my view.
Stats where Love is better:
-———————————————————-
PER – Love 22.5, KG 20.4,
Total – Reb% Love 21.5%, KG 13.9%
TS% – Love 56.7%, KG 52.7%
Points per 36 – Love 18.5, KG 17.0
3 pt FG% – Love 40.5%, KG 18.8&
FT% – Love 80.2%, KG 73.8%
rebounds per 36 – Love 13.9, KG 8.8
00000000000000000000000000000
Stats where KG is better
-———————————————————————-
Ast per 36 – KG 3.9, Love 2.8
Stl per 36 – KG 1.6, Love 0.9
Blks per 36 – KG 1.7, Love 0.4
by Kevin Love Jefferson on Mar 4, 2010 3:43 PM CST up reply actions
I don't entirely disagree
BUT, the defensive difference between the two may tilt the balance in KG’s favor. That said, both are/were pretty amazing 21 year olds.
The difference is in the D
KG is one of the best defenders of his era and was an intimidator around the hoop from Game 1.
by pagingstanleyroberts on Mar 4, 2010 5:15 PM CST up reply actions
KG even from a young age was a better defender, but a MUCH worse rebounder, shooter, no 3 point shot, free throws etc...etc...
In other words Love was better on offense and KG on defense. But to the extent that rebound ends a possession, then Love’s fabulous rebounding has to be considered part of defense as well.
In my opinion, [partly because I value the offense more] I think Love was the better 21 year old.
by Kevin Love Jefferson on Mar 4, 2010 6:27 PM CST up reply actions
Do you think Love will be the better
27 year old?
I could interpret your question 2 ways:
1) will Kevin be better at 27 than he is at 21, the answer to that is, OF COURSE, almost all players get better as they reach physically and mental maturity which peaks around 27.
2) will Kevin be better at 27 than KG was at 27?, thats much harder to answer. In his prime KG was one of the top 3 players in the NBA and many said the best player in the NBA. If Kevin was THAT GOOD, it would obviously be a good thing for us, if we were smart enough to keep him.
Will Love be that good, I can only hope so.
but Love was better at 21, at least in my view.
by Kevin Love Jefferson on Mar 5, 2010 11:10 AM CST up reply actions
But... you can't interpret it the first way
I said “Do you think Love will be the better 27 year old?” Taken in context of the conversation, it is even more obvious. But that’s semantics, who cares.
Love will be a better rebounder and a better 3pt shooter than KG when he is 27… besides that though… probably still more efficient… Not much else. It’s pretty obvious that he will never come close to KG’s defensive talents or his in-game intensity. Love does a pretty spectacular job of making teammates better, but not compared to Garnett.
I’m going to give you a nice shiny guarantee, you can put it under your pillow at night and it will make you feel better. Kevin Love will never be as good as Kevin Garnett in their primes. Another guarantee, both players are talented.
I remember when Bird was drafted people said his was too slow for the NBA, he would be a flop.
Not only wasn’t he a flop….well you know the story….
Don’t count out Love. As his body matures he will become much tougher and have more energy. He could be 6’9" charles Barkley with Birds shooting and passing skills. That would be pretty good. Maybe even better than KG.
by Kevin Love Jefferson on Mar 5, 2010 11:53 AM CST up reply actions
Kevin Love would have been a rockstar
any time pre-90s. Now he will be a tremendous role player.
We'll see. I hope I'm right and you are wrong.
I do agree that Love needs to learn to be a “go to” scorer.
by Kevin Love Jefferson on Mar 5, 2010 2:19 PM CST up reply actions
"standing out"
means that he looks like the best player. Sometimes he does, and sometimes he doesn’t. It’s a terrible team. If Kobe Bryant, at any point in his career, were on this team, he would stand out. We’d also win more than 15-20, whatever we end up at.
A team that started Smush Parker and Kwame Brown
by pagingstanleyroberts on Mar 2, 2010 11:05 PM CST up reply actions
I'll never understand
why the Lakers kept giving Kwame so many of Bynum’s minutes. Even back then, when he hardly played, Bynum was clearly much, much better than Kwame.
For that matter, the Caron Butler for Kwame trade was mind-bogglingly stupid. The post-Shaq trade Lakers were tough to watch.
It was one of those couple of years when Kobe completely checked out in Game 7 of their playoff series (against the Suns, maybe?) and didn’t take a single shot in the second half, letting his team lose just to, I don’t know, prove a point? That was a bizarre thing to do, and is the main reason I can never have much respect for Kobe. When the going gets tough, Kobe gives up.
by princelyfrank on Mar 3, 2010 12:52 AM CST up reply actions
I think that was in the Phoenix series when he was being criticized for taking too many shots. What did Kobe do? Started passing up EVERYTHING just to prove how bad his team was when he wasn’t dominating the ball. Kind of funny, honestly.
When I get sad, I stop being sad and be awesome instead. True story.
Maybe this is the root
of some of Rambis’ crazy rotations – he learned it from Phil.
Growing my own "Darko-stache" since last Monday.
Tell you what, as far as "standing out" goes,
During the next few games, make a point of visiting the game thread for our opposition. (I’ve done so, making a real effort to be interested rather than in any way uncivil.)
You will, early in most games, get posts from the other team’s fans saying “Hey, how do we get Love on our team?? The Wolves aren’t starting him, which is bizarre, so they must undervalue the kid.” Other fans notice this, so they see Love “standing out,” anyway. Aside from the numbers, which show ludicrous rebounding, he passes the “by eye” check with people from outside the tiny bubble of Wolves fans.
"It has come to the editor’s attention that the Herald-Leader neglected to cover the civil rights movement. We regret the omission."
I'd rather read other fans' takes on their own players...
since they watch them the most.
When watching the Wolves, they’ve probably looked at the stats, and try to gather some first impressions. Depending on what game it is, Love might look great, and he might look not-so-great.
So let me see,
You say Love hasn’t stood out, but you won’t accept either the statistical evidence or the impressions of either Wolves fans or the fans of other teams who notice him standing out?
Just exactly what does the guy have to do to please you?
"It has come to the editor’s attention that the Herald-Leader neglected to cover the civil rights movement. We regret the omission."
Just a guess here,
1. Shoot more contested jumpers. The lower percentage of these shots should not bother him, because some will go in and be very impressive.
2. Play on a team with better players so he can win games.
3. Once #2 is accomplished, demand the ball in crunch time and make shots that win games. He shouldn’t have to worry about taking too many of these because people don’t remember the ones you miss.
4. Never make a simple play when a less efficient play with a higher degree of difficulty is available as an alternative.
5. SHOOT MORE!!!
Not 100% completely true, maybe
Though he is guilty of those things. Granted, a lot of these flaws arise from the difficulty of being a top player whom the other team is game-planning. Maybe those few years of Smush-era teams didn’t help him either.
But he’s Kobe f’ing Bryant, and he plays on a phenomenally talented team. He can get better shots or create better shots for his teammates. Just because you’re good enough to hit absurdly hard shots doesn’t mean that they should be taken. He takes a lot of deep contested threes in crunch time, and they miss more often than some like to remember (except for this year, holy crap!).
Statistically speaking, he’s not even as clutch as LeBron or Melo or others. The guy is still too much of a gunner for my tastes, even being as unbelievably talented as he is.
This list is inaccurate
What it is is a list of FORWARDS that have achieved those numbers; it does not include the centers who have done so.
Nonetheless, it’s impressive. Gotta figure out a way for him to play 35 minutes.
Al just helped him out, I imagine.
"Never make predictions, especially about the future." Casey Stengel
Surprisingly not
Rambis at practice yesterday said something about Love getting his “30 or so minutes” because “that is where he is as a player right now”.
There is something really curious about the Rambis/Love tandem. I don’t know if Rambis thinks Love needs to show greater effort or consistency or conditioning or what. But he certainly seems unwilling to give Love a larger role until “something” gets better.
"It's tough to make predictions, especially about the future." -- Yogi Berra
by Wile E Coyote on Mar 2, 2010 5:13 PM CST up reply actions
I suggest the explanation
in my fanpost. Please read.
Putting Love in for 40 minutes a game would be against the idea of “player development”.
See Recommended Fanposts
A conversation between Kahn and Rambis
Feedback welcome, berating the poster is cool too!
I think
Rambis views Love as a better version of himself, and so is harder on Love than anyone else. Not super athletic, slightly undersized yet scrappy PF? What was Rambis’ calling card? Defense and a never stopping motor – and what is Rambis’ most consistent criticism of Love – intensity in general, followed by defensive intensity. I get a little nervous sometimes because Love sounds/looks like he can get a little petulant at times about his PT, but I also think that he’s a guy that doesn’t back down from a challenge and may end up becoming a far better player in trying to ‘prove’ Rambis wrong (or however you want to phrase it – doesn’t have to be so antagonistic).
I also want to point out that if KG in his prime was on this team, Love would be competing to be considered 2nd option behind a scoring wing of some sort. And that’s not meant to be a slap against Love, but rather an honest reflection of how he’d stack up against the great ones. Love’s the kind of player who, in my opinion, will never lead your team to the championship series but who can be the difference in winning or losing it. He’s the ultimate complimentary player – the guy who is so good at playing in the cracks of the game that he becomes a significant and important difference maker, but a guy who will never ever be a Kobe or a KG type player (focal point of the team with the ability and talent to carry a team far). In fact, Love paired with KG would have gotten us out of the first round in far fewer tries in the early part of KG’s career.
Growing my own "Darko-stache" since last Monday.
Excellent take
Rambis did study at the knee of the Mandarin (and his 10 rings of power), who I consider a fantastic motivator, and certainly not above messing with a player’s mind to alter his approach to the game. I wonder if that’s that game Rambis is playing now with Love, making him fight harder for PT than he should have to, given the dearth of talent around him. In the long term, I think it would make him a better player.
Love's role in the NBA is going to be as a perennial 6th man of the year candidate
A luxury that is really nice to have, but is not necessary to win a championship.
He just creates too many mismatches that other teams are able to exploit for him to be a starter and go up against a team’s best big men night in and night out.
If God-willing we ever make the playoffs again and Love is our starting PF and we don’t have a very, very good 2-way center next to him, we will get crushed.
I know Love is the canispoopus golden boy and all, but does anybody really believe he is a superstar like people are saying in this thread? Do you even watch games, or just lie in bed all day dreaming about John Hollinger?
Yeah...
I wouldn’t advocate that Love is a superstar or ever will be, but he’s great next to a two-way center like Darko.
Even without Darko, I’d still take Love over Al just for all the little things he does that Al does not.
by SF on Mar 3, 2010 3:39 AM CST up reply actions
Darko? Great 2-way center? sorry to say he doesn't qualify
I was thinking more along the lines of Bynum or Bogut
You misread his post, though I understand your point
He wasn’t saying that Darko was a great 2-way center, just that he is a 2-way center (true) and that as a result Kevin plays better alongside him. I think it’s been fair to say that this is the case, with Darko’s defensive abilities and his willingness to play team offense meshing really well with Kevin. They’re fun to watch together, even if they’re still an overall talent negative relative to Love-Jefferson.
I do agree that a true center of those two mentioned players’ caliber would be great for Love; Bogut is an especially intriguing player considering his toughness and versatility. Guy is a pretty damn good passer and athlete for a big. Bogut kinda seems like the best-case scenario for Darko – a skilled and athletic big that can block shots and play solid team D.
Love is a stud
Top 5 rebounder in the NBA at 21, efficient scorer with 3 Point range, High BBIQ, good passer. Still getting better in all aspects. Love is our starting PF and will be when we start winning games. Just needs to lose those Love handles maybe…lmao.
The thing about Love's minutes
is that he is playing 4 more mpg than last year. That’s about 15% more PT… Also, he has 4.3 win shares at 41 games. As a second year player. Just think if we had other guys in the starting lineup like him, we’d be an over 50% team without taking our bench into account. That’s not bad at all when you consider that our “KLove Allstars” are only playing 60% of the game.
Basically this crappy calculation should show that if we had 5 Kevin Love caliber players we would have 35 wins out of the 41 games that he has played if they played all the minutes. It’s using win shares so it’s not exactly the most reliable, and you also have to take into account that 5 Lebrons would win 129 games out of the 82 in a season. Soooo take it for what it’s worth. And that’s not much. But it does say something!
I think I need a degree in calculus to understand some of these basketball statistics
I was an English major for a reason.
Well at least
you can read what everyone on this board types!
Why Kevin Love is better than Kevin Durant
Well, he’s not really. Certainly, it’s hard to envision Love carrying a team like Durant can. But if certain advanced statistics, such as wins produced suggest that he contributes more, it probably means we should look a little closer at, not just the individual players, but at how different outputs on the court add value to a team’s success. Now I’m not a statistician, or even an advanced stats guy, but I think I can discern some information out of the statistics that help understand why advanced stats might favor Love over Durant, and why this notion might not be completely crazy, even if it fails the eyeball test. The answer suggests that this statistic values something other than what fans appreciate in watching a game.
Actually, I was originally going to title this post "why Love is better than Melo" but in looking at the statistical comparison, Love actually did outperform Melo in FG%, eFG%, TS%, 3pt%, Assist rate and Asst/TO. So, it did not give the counter point of Love scoring better on wins produced while being an inferior scorer. That’s the comparison I wanted, and it’s why I’m looking at Durant. Now unless I’m wrong, every possession is going to end in a shot attempt, free throws, or some sort of turnover. The question becomes, how much of an advantage is it to have Durant use that possession in comparison to another player? Looking at straight FG%, Durant shoots 47.8% compared to a league average of 46.3%. That means that although to our eyes, Durant is a lights out scorer, it would take almost 100 possessions for there to be a benefit of Durant taking the shot over an average NBA player. Of course, it ignores 3 pt shots, where Durant shoots better than the league average, 38.4 vs 35.6, but again that’s less than a 10% improvement in success rate, or FT, where Durant shoots considerably more FT per FGA than the league average 0.49 to 0.31. So, adding in those measures by calculating TS%, and Durant is a 10% better scorer than average (TS% = 60.2 vs. 54.6).
Now Love is an above average scorer (TS% = 56.5), but his huge wins produced scores must come largely from rebounding. I’ll focus on offensive rebounding here, since offensive rebounds are more rare than defensive boards. Often, if a player fails to grab a defensive rebound, it will be secured by a teammate, making defensive rebounds less valuable in terms of accumulating possessions. Love leads the league (all data from Hoopsdata based on 30+ games, 20+ min/game) in offensive rebound rate, grabbing 15.2 % of available offensive boards. This is an astonishing 3 times the league average (5.0). This is a greater fold difference over league average than Rondo’s steal rate. So, what Love is providing is a huge percentage increase in the chance for additional possessions, while even a great scorer provides an incremental increase in the potential to convert on those possessions at a greater rate than would Love, or a league average player.
This is completely counter intuitive, since we observe great scoring plays from the great offensive players, and some horrid shots thrown up by our scoring-challenged team. But statistically, there’s not a huge difference in the scoring outcome of a given possession, or even a handful of possessions. This is seen in baseball, where your heart sinks into despair when the .240 hitting shortstop comes up in a clutch 2 out situation, whereas you get up on your feet when your .290 hitting left fielder steps in. in truth, their difference is 5 hits every 100 at bats, or maybe 1.25 hits per week.
Of course, the statistical approach has its limitations. For these very sacred possessions, someone actually has to take a shot, and the ability to create that shot is hugely important. And once you break down the types of shots further, where everyone in the league can make a breakaway dunk, you can better appreciate raw scoring ability. But the value in statistics, is that they get you to examine your assumptions, look deeper into the data, and think about what adds or subtracts value for the team. But, since I do end up coming across as a bit of a Love apologist at times, I do want to make it clear that I would rather have Durant on the team than Love. But I do think that Love adds significant value to the team despite the fact that he is not a go-to guy per se.
by dropstep on Mar 3, 2010 5:46 PM CST reply actions 4 recs
You lost me at the title
If you have statistical model that suggests Kevin Love is a better player than Kevin Durant, you need to throw out that model and start over.
Not a big "facts" or "data" guy, I guess.
I do appreciate you reading the title though. I guess that took some effort. In a nut shell there is a difference between “better” and “value”.
Come on TA
Really?
I’m alternately amused and deeply surprised by the way hard-core, knowledgeable basketball fans refuse to even consider some of the new statistical approaches to analyzing the league.
I thought after Moneyball all the smart folks would leave that “I only trust what I see with my eyeballs!” mentality behind, but so many posters on CH that I respect have turned up their noses at the wins produced discussion (not to mention the adjusted +/- one last year) that I feel like throwing up my hands.
Probably half the GMs out there still feel this way too…damn I wish I could trade with them. :)
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