Love is still a great offensive rebounder and a good perimeter shooter. The popular idea that he's garbage in this board makes about as much sense as this board's infatuation with the Euromistake.
If Ainge wants him, make a quality offer. It's CERTAINLY a better use of the 3 than Dragan No D.
Is he really still a great offensive rebounder? His Offensive rebounding numbers have been just OK for the last 3 years.
His rebounding has really gone down the crapper since the injury, which is the main reason I couldn't convince myself he was worth mortgaging the house for last offseason.
Smart, 16, and one of our future firsts, I may be convinced. However, it seems you can't have a deal without including Johnson and Jerebko for salary purposes, which sucks.
To be clear: It is his offensive rebounding that has gone in the crapper, and it probably has more to do with the way CLE uses him than the injury.
Love's ORB% was already declining steadily in Minnesota, from 15.1% as a rookie down to 8.5% his last year there before bottoming out at 6.5% & 7.0% as a Cav.
This anti-correlates perfectly with Loves increasing 3PAr (ration of 3PT shots to FGA) climbing from just 2.8% his rookie season all the way up to 44.9% last year. Basically, he's been told to stand outside the arc on offense -- this makes it very difficult to grab ORBs, naturally.
On the defensive end, Love's DRB% is still very, very good, at 28.4% this last year. That's only slightly down from his career average of 29.1%. For comparison, Sullinger (27.0%) and Lee (20.4%) posted the highest DRB% numbers on our roster last year. So Love is still an excellent rebounder on the end of the court where he plays closer to the hoop.
On what to offer for him, I tend to agree with your general take. The players we have that they would seemingly be interested in would likely be veterans like Crowder, Bradley or Smart. So I expect one of them would have to go in the deal. I doubt they are too interested in one of this year's draft picks since they need help now, so probably a future pick would be preferable to them over current picks & baby players.
Alternatively, we play the middle-man and move picks & young players to a third team, which sends some desired veteran(s) to CLE.