Playing for Potatoes: Akron – Utah State Preview
December 22, 20152015 WFNY Author Spotlight : Best of Joe Gilbert
December 22, 2015Compared to the craziness of 2014, Cleveland Sports in 2015 came off as uneventful. The Indians failed to make the postseason — again. The Browns are perpetually a disaster on and off of the field. Nevertheless, as the year comes to a close, just as we have done the last seven years, WFNY will take a look at what we view to be the ten biggest sports stories to grace our local sports scene over the last 12 months. Each day through the rest of the year, we will be counting down from ten to one. Do enjoy.
Have you ever been falsely accused of something?
Worse yet, have you ever been falsely accused of something and nobody believed you when you professed your innocence? The overwhelming frustration is palpable as you insist time and time again that everyone else has the wrong idea. But nobody believes you.
Kevin Love’s 2014-15 season with the Cleveland Cavaliers was a bit like a man falsely accused of something. In Love’s case, the false accusation was that he was miserable in Cleveland and wouldn’t be sticking with the Cavaliers after the season was over.
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Of course, nobody knows the degree of truth to those accusations. It didn’t turn out that way, but that doesn’t mean that the rumors of Love’s discontent weren’t rooted in some reality. However, sports is a results-oriented business where the bottom line end result is often the only thing that matters. And in the case of Kevin Love, he did exactly what he said he was going to do all along. He re-signed with the Cleveland Cavaliers.
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There’s no denying the 2014-15 season was a pretty strange one for the Cleveland Cavaliers. Fresh off four consecutive losing seasons in which the team was rarely competitive, the Cavaliers suddenly found themselves as a championship contender with a trio of All-Stars all under the age of 30 in LeBron James, Kyrie Irving, and Kevin Love.
For Love, “strange” doesn’t even begin to describe his season. For starters, Love struggled early on to find his role in the Cavaliers offense. With Kyrie Irving used to shouldering the offensive load and LeBron James playing overly passive to prove a point, it was Love who sacrificed the most in his attempt to fit in with his new team. As his numbers declined from his career averages, many began to notice and proclaim that Love was not being used properly in the Cleveland offense.
They weren’t necessarily wrong. Love frequently operated in the post with the Minnesota Timberwolves. His outside shooting was more of a distracting decoy used to keep defenses honest. In Cleveland, however, Love was often more or less just hanging out on the perimeter and waiting to catch and shoot threes. Love clearly was struggling to figure out what was being asked of him and what was expected from him on offense.
Something Love said stood out. He stated he wasn’t asked to score the ball on this particular night. Northeast Ohio Media Group was granted a brief 1-on-1 opportunity with the power forward in an attempt to gain some clarity.
When is he actually asked to be a scorer?
“That’s tough to answer,” he responded. “I don’t know. I just kind of go out there and play and affect the game. Right now, I’m trying to find my way.”
As Love’s struggles continued, he at times seemed to withdraw from teammates, and that’s when things really took a bizarre turn.
There was that time when LeBron James threw that infamous “FIT-IN” subtweet at Love. Initially LeBron denied it was about Love, before somewhat bizarrely changing course and saying that it was indeed about Love.
Later in the season, LeBron posted a couple pictures to Instagram of various teammates with the word “clique” in the captions. Love was not in any of the pictures. So of course that led to a whole mess of nonsense about Love and LeBron’s relationship. Even Kevin Love’s Thanksgiving dinner featured some Instagram drama.
As the season went on, however, Love seemed to find his role in the offense and the team was on absolute fire over the last few months of the season. Everything seemed to be falling into place as Love got his first taste of NBA playoff basketball. But then Love’s season came to an abrupt end thanks to Kelly Olynyk’s best attempt at pulling Love’s arm out of its socket.
In many ways it was the most trying season of Kevin Love’s life. Through it all, though, Love never stopped insisting that he wanted to come back to Cleveland and that he had ever intention of signing a long term deal with the Cavaliers.
But nobody would believe him.
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To go back and try to find all the times Kevin Love said he was planning on being with the Cavaliers long term is a daunting task. Love was asked countless times last season about his plans for the future. His answers hardly ever wavered no matter how tired of the question he might have been. He told Chris Haynes he wasn’t going anywhere:
“I’ve said all along that I plan on being a Cavalier long-term,” Love said without hesitation. “As we continue to evolve, my role will continue to evolve. It’s still a process where I’m figuring it out.”
There was the time Love went on Mike and Mike’s radio show on ESPN Radio and said mostly the same things:
“Since I was traded to Cleveland this summer, I’ve said since Day 1 that I’m a Cleveland Cavalier long term and I plan for it to be that way. I want to grow with this team. There’s a lot of guys with a lot of unique talent, one-through-fifteen, on our roster who are going to be here for a long time. If I could end all the speculation now, I would. But people are going to continue to talk no matter what. I just want to continue getting better with this team long term. I’m a Cleveland Cavalier.”
Even after Game 1 of the NBA Finals, a game which Love painfully had to watch from the bench after his season-ending shoulder surgery, Love insisted he wanted to come back to Cleveland in an interview with ESPN’s Ramona Shelburne:
“I’ve never wanted to be in a game more than that one,” said Love, who had never been on a playoff team in his six prior NBA seasons.
Asked specifically whether that meant he wanted to be back in Cleveland next season, Love said, “Yes. I want to win.”
Love has never wavered from that stance in his lone season with the Cavaliers, but speculation has remained that he could leave as a free agent this summer if he opts out of the final season and $16.7 million remaining on his contract.
Asked why that speculation remains, Love said, “It’s just the way the world works now. People talk so much and might tell themselves a lie so much they start to believe it. From there, the narrative starts to change. I haven’t changed my narrative. I’m going to keep supporting these guys, and we’ll be talking to Cleveland after the season.”
No matter how many times he said, no matter how clear he tried to make it, nobody seemed to believe him. The narrative even as Love opted out of his contract and became a free agent was that he would definitely be leaving Cleveland. ESPN’s Chris Broussard even went as far as reporting that the Lakers and Love had a meeting set up, which fueled the speculation even further.
If there was ever a time for Cavs fans to be nervous about Love’s future, that was perhaps the time. All season long, the Los Angeles Lakers were considered to be the one team that Love would leave the Cavaliers for. And now Love was going to meet with them? It was an uneasy feeling.
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I’m going back to Cleveland.
After Game 1 of the NBA Finals, that’s when it really struck me. Sitting on the sidelines, I never wanted to play in a game more than that one. I had dreamed of playing in the NBA Finals and I just wanted to help my guys win. I couldn’t have been prouder of them as they poured their blood, sweat and tears onto the court.
Yeah, of course I’ve heard the free agency rumors. But at the end of the day, and after meeting with my teammates (it turns out pools are great meeting places) and with the front office, it was clear Cleveland was the place for me. We’re all on the same page and we’re all in. We have unfinished business and now it’s time to get back to work.
It was short, simple, and to the point. In three brief paragraphs in The Players’ Tribune, Kevin Love proved that he was a man of his word and that everyone who doubted he was going to do what he said he would, was wrong.
The Cavaliers had been through this before. Just one year prior, the Cavaliers had to endure an entire season of rumors that Kyrie Irving wouldn’t sign an extension with the Cavaliers and was trying to get out of Cleveland as soon as possible. Then, on the first night of free agency, Irving shocked everyone by immediately signing a max extension.
Surely it wouldn’t be that easy with Love this time around. After all, Love had to take that meeting with the Lakers. And possibly other teams. This could take some time.
On day one of free agency this year, the Cavaliers did get some good news as Iman Shumpert immediately signed his contract to stay in Cleveland. The biggest surprise was yet to come, however. To the surprise of most NBA analysts and pundits, Love didn’t have that meeting with the Lakers. He didn’t talk to any other teams. Kevin Love meant what he had said all along. He knew Cleveland was where he wanted to be. Day one of free agency, Love talked to Cavaliers GM David Griffin and quickly agreed to a long-term deal to stay in Cleveland.
The roller coaster ride of Kevin Love’s whirlwind season was finally over. No more rumors, no more doubts, no more apprehension. Kevin Love may have been a Cavalier for a whole season, but it wasn’t until he signed his extension that the NBA media finally had to admit that, yes, Kevin Love was going to be a Cavalier for the foreseeable future.