Why would we want to?
This season Kevin Love has clearly proven everything I have been saying all along - he is not a star.
I don't understand why other's were not able to see this. When Love was with Minnesota the only stats anybody looked at were PPG and RPG - and based on this everybody was quick to declare him a superstar and a centrepiece for a team. If you look at the facts though, it was clear to see he'd never be that guy.
First of all, his scoring numbers were only high because he had an astronomically high FGA rate. Simply put? The guy took a LOT of shots. As a 6'10" PF Love has barely ever averaged more than about 45% from the field - a woeful number. You could argue that this is because he's a stretch 4 but that doesn't fit either, because his 3PT% has typically not been that fantastic, nor have his percentages from midrange. Granted he did get to the line a lot (where he shot a high percentage) but aside from that his impressive scoring numbers were purely the result of him being the only #1 scorer in a team that was seriously lacking star power.
Secondly, there was always going to be the issue with his defence. Kevin Love defenders will forever cry that his defence is not that bad - the stats tell a different story. He's a terrible defender, and even last season (the best offensive season of his career) his offensive production was still barely enough to offset his sieve like defence. Drop down his FGA rate to more reasonable numbers (as has happened this year) and the offensive production drops, but he's still on the court > 30 MPG...so he's no longer capable of producing enough offense to offset what he's allowing on defence.
Finally, there was the mentality. Love has clearly shown over the years that he lacks both loyalty and leadership skills. The guy was publically criticised by his own teammates (while he was in Minny) for not being a good leader, and this was further evidenced by the fact that he did not lead the Wolves to a single playoff game in his time there - even getting swept in the first round would be more impressive than anything Love achieved for his team. Then rather than take a look at himself, he responded by requesting to be traded...choosing to try and negotiate his way on to a playoff team, rather then taking on the challenge of trying to mould his current team into one.
Kevin Love is one of those guys who doesn't make sense for anybody. He's no use on a team that's stacked with talent because (as we can see now) he then can't produce enough offense to make up for his horrible defence. He's no good on a young rebuilding team because he completely lacks loyalty and leadership ability.
Yet if you get him, you'll be paying him a max contract.
Hell with that...I'd rather just keep Sully and Olynyk and develop those guys for the $2M a year they are owed...rather than spend 1/3 of the team's salary cap on 'that guy'.
Kevin Love is getting very close to creeping into "team cancer" territory...he just seems to bring losing habits to every team he plays on.
