Stan Van Gundy Says Pistons Hardly Discussed Kevin Love Before Game

It took a combined LeBron James and Kyrie Irving effort to dispatch the Pistons last night, 103-95. The pair scored 26 of Cleveland’s 28 fourth-quarter points, and Irving matched his season-high with 38. Kevin Love struggled again on offense with just seven points on 3-of-11 shooting, and it was clear from Pistons coach Stan Van Gundy he wasn’t a priority when they were scheming before the game.

“Everybody did a pretty good job on Kevin Love tonight, I thought. I thought we defended him pretty well,” Pistons coach Stan Van Gundy said, by way of Jason Lloyd at the Akron Beacon Journal. “That’s how talented they are. You go into a game and, I don’t know, Kevin Love’s been an All-Star for what? Three, four years? You don’t even talk about him in your preparation hardly. That’s how good the other guys are.”

Love has increasingly been relegated to a tertiary role in Cleveland’s offense, and his ability to affect the game on the offensive end has been reduced even further with the addition of J.R. Smith and Iman Shumpert.

Twice during Cleveland’s current seven-game winning streak Love has failed to crack double-digits in the scoring column and it’s happened seven times so far this year after not happening once during Love’s 2013-14 campaign with the ‘Wolves.

We’ve mentioned how much we’d like to see Love pick-and-pops and pick-and-rolls with Irving and LeBron as the ball handler, but it doesn’t happen with much frequency, and he’s taking more shots without a dribble than he did last year. Against the Pistons, not one of his shots came after a dribble, and for a player who spent more time with the ball in Minney, that can affect his efficiency. He didn’t have the ball for longer than 1.4 seconds before any of his shots, and he’s morphed into a classic stretch four who isn’t asked to break anyone down in the post or off the dribble.

Primarily, it’s his usage that’s down (22.1 percent is his lowest since his rookie year), and it’s something Chris Bosh had to contend with when he moved from Toronto to Miami in 2010 to play alongside LeBron. That can take time, especially for a high frequency player like Love unaccustomed to taking a back seat to his teammates on offense.

If the current trend continues and Love’s presence is blotted out by the sun that is LeBron and Irving, more teams will ignore Love like Van Gundy admitted after the game. It’s on Love and coach David Blatt to take advantage of that opening and create more scoring opportunities if he’s going to become the acclaimed addition he was supposed to be this summer.

(Akron Beacon Journal; video via Basketball Nation)

Will Love ever become a key contributor on offense again?

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