Examining the Kevin Love trade
By Seth Partnow
Tomorrow is August 23rd and it will be a big day in the NBA. Not only will the final roster for Team USA be revealed, but more importantly our long national nightmare will be over: the Kevin Love-to-Cleveland trade will finally go down.
The final form of the deal seemed to take shape on Thursday. On top of the already understood Love-for-Andrew Wiggins framework, Philadelphia found a way to insert themselves into the trade. According to reports, the final deal will look as follows.
- Minnesota – Gives: Kevin Love, Luc Richard Mbah a Moute, Alexey Shved. Gets: Andrew Wiggins, Anthony Bennett, Thaddeus Young, and a Traded Player Exception (TPE) worth around $5 million.
- Philadelphia – Gives: Young. Gets: Mbah a Moute, Shved, 2015 Miami 1st Round Pick (lottery protected, via Cleveland)
- Cleveland – Gives: Wiggins, Bennett, Cleveland 2015 1st Rd Pick. Gets – Love
Picking winners and losers from a complicated, three-way trade is always difficult, especially in an instance like this where every team gets what it wants. Cleveland will add a second (or third, depending on one’s opinion of Kyrie Irving) superstar in their prime to go with LeBron James. Minnesota is receiving a somewhat unprecedented haul for a soon-to-depart franchise player. Philadelphia adds more draft selections while providing increased opportunities for their young players. (Or, less generously, strips yet more talent in the Sixers continuing race to the bottom of the standings.)
Starting with the Cavs, Love is obviously the best player in the deal by a large margin. He’s a massive favorite to out-produce Wiggins over the life of the Canadian swingman’s rookie season, and will probably provide more value than Wiggins, Bennett and the player selected with the draft pick. However, he’s also going to be making three to four times as much as Wiggins.
More worrisome than salary concerns will be Cleveland’s defense. LeBron took a step back on that end last season, Irving has never approached adequate and defense has never been Love’s calling card. Anderson Varejao, Matthew Dellavedova and soon-to-be-signed Shawn Marion will help some on that front, but they are respectively extremely injury prone, a 10-15 minute per game backup and 36 years old. For the first season of this Cleveland squad, they’ll be looking to simply outscore teams rather than win with defense, unlike most recent NBA champions.
Even assuming the Cavs have a handshake agreement of some sort with Love for a new contract after the season, giving up so much for an expiring contract is also a big risk. If Love was set on playing with James, why not simply wait to sign him in the 2015 offseason? Still, it’s hard to blame Cleveland for going all-in for the remaining years of LeBron’s prime rather than trying to plan for five years (and a new collective bargaining agreement) down the road.
Minnesota has somehow managed to both pick up a future potential superstar in Wiggins, and add a player ready to produce now in the very underrated Young. Throw in Bennett, badly in need of a fresh start after his disastrous rookie season, and the Wolves have done better than any back-against-the-wall team in memory. The one downside is concern that trading what might be a decently high Miami pick for a player in contract year like Young is a strange decision for a team whose playoff hopes are slim and none.
On the floor, this version of the Timberwolves will be one of the best League Pass teams in the league. Ricky Rubio will be the unquestioned focal point of the offense, and this might be the season his creativity blooms, finding Wiggins, Young and rookie Zach LaVine flying to the rim. However, even with the improved depth and athleticism, this was a team that was atrocious with Love off the floor, and adding three quarters does not add up to a dollar.
For Philadelphia, merely being included in the deal is a pure win. They would surely have looked to offload the productive Young at some point before the trading deadline in any event, and now they have already secured a first round pick for his services. Plus, they get the chance to see if Shved’s occasional flashes of pick-and-roll ability are sustainable in the NBA for a season. Mbah a Moute will provide some veteran leadership (and perhaps guidelines for not getting in trouble on twitter), especially for this year’s top pick Joel Embiid, who Mbah a Moute, to a degree, discovered in their native Cameroon.
The determination of who “won” this deal will end up being completely entwined with how the Cavaliers fare over the next few years. If Cleveland comes close to matching the success James enjoyed with Miami the last four years, they will have been the big winners. If they fall short while Wiggins begins to deliver on his vast potential, it will be seen as a disaster, with very little room in between.