Browns visit with several wide receivers before NFL Draft
April 28, 2015Ball Played: Defense, bullpen, and score all favored Royals
April 28, 2015The 2014-15 Cleveland Cavaliers are better with Kevin Love on the floor. That is because Kevin Love is an All-Star player. Yes, before the season many thought of Love as a top-10 NBA player. That’s likely no longer the case. But as we’re seeing now with the lack of Cavs frontcourt depth, Love is quite, quite valuable to this team.
This shows up in the statistics. In a cursory look at the on-off numbers for the Cavs, one will quickly see this instinctively alarming sign:
With Kevin Love: +7.5 per 48 minutes (2,532 minutes total)
Without Kevin Love: -1.0 per 48 minutes (1,424 minutes total)
Cue the sirens! The Cavs are slightly below average when Kevin Love is not playing. That’s obviously not ideal. Add in the fact that this team will be without J.R. Smith for two games, and one could make a quick numbers-based argument for expected struggles in the Eastern Conference Semifinals. But alas, it’s not so easy with a more refined look.
Here are three charts that I sent out on Twitter yesterday in reference to more detailed lineup statistics on the Kevin Love topic:
Cavs with Kevin Love: +7.5 per 48. Cavs without Kevin Love: -1.0 per 48. pic.twitter.com/cVlAtCFXJt
— Jacob L. Rosen (@JacobLRosen) April 27, 2015
Glad y'all were paying attention. Made mistake in earlier #Cavs starting lineup combinations tweet. Corrected: pic.twitter.com/goqR6oavmP
— Jacob L. Rosen (@JacobLRosen) April 28, 2015
Here's how #Cavs (and other three starters) performed in lineups without Kevin Love or J.R. Smith: pic.twitter.com/mKBRiaYkHg
— Jacob L. Rosen (@JacobLRosen) April 28, 2015
There are a lot of numbers in those tweets and a whole bunch of different lineup configurations. So I’ll share my three key takeaways in a bit clearer language below:
1. The Cavs are great with at least two starters on the court. They’re +8.3 (3,083 minutes) per 48 with at least two of the five new starters. They’re -9.0 (873 minutes) per 48 with one or none. Compared to a team like the Golden State Warriors, the Cavs have been much more up-and-down, hot-and-cold1. They’ve destroyed opponents at their best. And they’ve gotten torched on occasion, especially early in the season.
2. By nature, Kevin Love often plays with other starters. This is quite obvious but it leads to a conundrum! Love played about 93 percent of his minutes this season with LeBron James and/or Kyrie Irving. And he played 96 percent with the fellow starters. He only played 104 total minutes alone, separate from all four others. Given the first point above, do you see how that could unfairly skew his individual on-off numbers? Do you see how then we’re likely dealing with the Small Sample Size Syndrome? The team was really bad when there weren’t multiple starters out there. Love played almost all of his minutes with fellow starters. So Love’s limited “off” data would be expected to be pretty bad.
3. There are some encouraging signs in the non-Love/Smith numbers. First, the somewhat depressing news: There have only been 40 minutes of playing time for Timofey Mozgov-LeBron James-Kyrie Irving, sans Kevin Love and J.R. Smith. That’s oddly low. However, when at least two of those three remaining starters have been on the court, the Cavs have again terrorized opponents. In this new-look rotation, one would expect to see two of them on the court more frequently, and fewer all-bench lineups.
One could crunch numbers further to try and “standardize” the effects of how Love often players with these other starters. In theory, this is what ESPN’s Real Plus-Minus and various relative of that statistic hope to accomplish2. The stat remains imperfect, however, just like any on-off-based metric, because it’s impossible to account for truly everything. But by diving deeper just a wee bit more, one can see how there remains some hope in the data. And life might not just so terrible without Kevin Love for the next few weeks.
- Hence why, statistically, they’ll probably still turn out as the most inconsistent team in the league this season. [↩]
- A few essential must-reads on the topic of RPM: Alex Suchman had my favorite explainer; Kevin Ferrigan made the case for why it’s valuable; and I loved Jonathan Tjarks on Jae Crowder last season. [↩]
11 Comments
Thanks for slapping everyone’s hand away from the panic button Jacob, much appreciated. This is still an incredibly good team even without Kevin Love.
Without Love and Smith but with home court we can split those first two games. We get back Swish and for me it starts to look like this:
Starters: Irving, Smith, Shump, Bron and Moz
First of Bench: TT, Jones and Delly
Offensive/Defensive matchup situations; Miller, Marion.
http://temp_thoughts_resize.s3.amazonaws.com/e3/ef21d497efdc7be6b30f9c179278ed/Fallingforit.gif
Even if it’s Jones starting at the 3 or 4, which of the Bulls starters is going to dominate him? Mike Dunleavy Jr? Tony Snell? A hobbled Jo Noah? The Cavs minus Love are a better matchup against the Bulls than people think. Instead of going big and trying to match up the Bulls’ size, the Bucks have been going small in the 4th quarter with success using Henson at the 5, MCW at the 1, and a 3-man combination of Dudley, Mayo, Greek Freak, and Middleton for the remaining spots. Because when you have 4 guys on the floor who are three-point threats, you are pulling Noah’s shot-blocking away from the hoop and allowing your center to post up 1-on-1 against Pau Gasol (a historically poor defender). I’d take Mozgov in the low post against Pau Gasol any day of the week. I can’t say the same for Pau on the other end of the floor against T-Mo.
Agreed, Pau’s lapses in defense this series have become two fold from how bad he was in the regular season.
Bucks are pushing tempo on CHI (something we do better than anyone in the East) with that small lineup and it’s not allowing the Bulls bigs to gather back on the other end.
Oh and hey Atlanta…..so much for “team ball” and “we dont need a superstar because we play the right way” blah blah blah.
Like it or not come playoff time you absolutely need someone in that lineup that will say “NO, WE WILL NOT LOSE THIS SERIES”.
For all the people every year who look at the Spurs and say “hey, that’s team basketball”…yeah, it is but with superstars as well.
DWill is doing it for the Nets and the “coach of the year” looks clueless right now.
Sounds good until some thug takes out another one of our starters.
But it’s not the same and that will be shown the next round.
I don’t see Shump and Smith starting together. I see James Jones most likely in the starting five.
Both Chicago and Milwaukee have large frontcourts which will present an awfully big test for the Cavs with or without Love. I fear Chicago way more just to much talent. Rose, Butler, Gasol, Noah with Gibson, Snell, Mirotic and the backup PG is a very deep team.
Disagree, you can’t cover up Jones’s defenses lapses with Butler running around out there.
You need Shump on Butler and Jones on whomever CHI brings off the bench.
We’ll see if it’s Chicago.