Is Kevin Love Juking the Stats? (Big Bad D part one)
I wants my rebounds Kevin Love is a player at the bleeding edge of the basketball analytics movement. Is he a borderline MVP candidate or a marginally above replacement stat whore who doesn't contribute wins? I'm not going to begin to untangling that thicket advanced math and even more advanced online invective, but I will look into the most obvious hole in the KLove4MVP sign wavers' arguments. By reputation, the man plays very little defense. Though his reputation as a pylon is overblown, it is only just so.
It's only fair that I lead with the things Love does well on defense; defensive rebound and key the fast break. Love is currently second in the league in DREB%, grabbing over 30% of opponents missed shots while he is on the floor. His ability to spring soccer-style counterattacks off of these rebounds is well documented, but still worth seeing to appreciate the quickness, accuracy and distance of his long outlets:
These highlight plays aside, there is real debate as to the value of Love's rebounding. Of course grabbing rebounds is never bad per se, and on the team level, protecting the defensive backboard is one of the core "four factors" of winning basketball.
But individual rebounding stats might overcredit Love. Even the worst team in the NBA grabs more than 7 out of 10 opponent's misses, so how much value is Love really adding by hoovering these boards? Of course, they are not all simply empty rebounds with Love gobbling the stat like a hungry hungry hippo. Currently 31st out of 94 players averaging 5 or more rebounds per game in terms of percentage of his rebounds which are "contested" (rebounds where an opponent was within 3.5 feet of the reboud). He is slightly higher in terms of the the share of rebounds available to him (where he is within 3.5 feet of the rebound), ranking 24th out of 91. Thus he is well above average in terms of the metrics which detail the ability to rebound in traffic. Further there are only 5 players who score ahead of him on both metrics.
This clearly indicates he is an extremely effective rebounder. But where he takes the next step to become the most formidable rebounder in the league is his nose rebounding chances. Love averages over 21 rebound chances per game. The next closest player in the league (Dwight Howard) averages almost 3 full chances less. The player with the 8th most chances per game is close to Howard than Howard is to Love. Basically, Love is better about being around the boards than anyone else in the game. This is of course a double-sided coin. One of the primary qualitative crticisms of Love's defensive game is his unwillingness to move and rotate away from the basket (and thus rebounding chances.) As many of the plays shown below will demonstrate there is a great deal of truth to this complaint.
Love has the ability to provide adequate defense on the pick-and-roll:
But individual rebounding stats might overcredit Love. Even the worst team in the NBA grabs more than 7 out of 10 opponent's misses, so how much value is Love really adding by hoovering these boards? Of course, they are not all simply empty rebounds with Love gobbling the stat like a hungry hungry hippo. Currently 31st out of 94 players averaging 5 or more rebounds per game in terms of percentage of his rebounds which are "contested" (rebounds where an opponent was within 3.5 feet of the reboud). He is slightly higher in terms of the the share of rebounds available to him (where he is within 3.5 feet of the rebound), ranking 24th out of 91. Thus he is well above average in terms of the metrics which detail the ability to rebound in traffic. Further there are only 5 players who score ahead of him on both metrics.
This clearly indicates he is an extremely effective rebounder. But where he takes the next step to become the most formidable rebounder in the league is his nose rebounding chances. Love averages over 21 rebound chances per game. The next closest player in the league (Dwight Howard) averages almost 3 full chances less. The player with the 8th most chances per game is close to Howard than Howard is to Love. Basically, Love is better about being around the boards than anyone else in the game. This is of course a double-sided coin. One of the primary qualitative crticisms of Love's defensive game is his unwillingness to move and rotate away from the basket (and thus rebounding chances.) As many of the plays shown below will demonstrate there is a great deal of truth to this complaint.
Love has the ability to provide adequate defense on the pick-and-roll:
Though he is generally in the right areas, communicates picks well, and has solid footwork for the most part, Love struggles due to a combination of lack of speed and lack of size to defend the position.
Too Slow
Love is extremely reluctant to hedge against a pick-and-roll. While this is probably wise considering his relative lack of quickness, Love tends to not just drop off, but completely concede the shot to the ball-handler:
This can appear to be part of the Wolves the game plan - of course he drops vs. Wall. But on a number of occasions he played Brad Beal, a knockdown shooter, the same way:
This was not a one time occurrence. Similarly, this reluctance to come higher up the floor on pick-and-pops gives stretch 4's a bit of a free reign to step back and shoot relatively unmolested from distance. For example, on this play Love drops so far against a side pick-and-pop that he would have a hard time recovering to his man even if the effort was there (which it isn't in this particular play). Worse, the ball-handler in this play is Francisco Garcia, not anyone's idea of threat to turn the corner:
Love's lack of speed can also hinder him by forcing him to start recovering too early, before the ball is fully contained:
Too Small
The end of the above play demonstrates another of Love's self-apparent limitations - his inability to protect the rim. Being neither particularly long-armed nor much of a leaper, as well as lacking the Anderson Varejao-like ability to draw charges, love does not offer much of a deterrent when the Wolves perimeter players get beat:
For as sturdy a player as he can be when it comes to rebounding, Love is surprisingly ease to post up, both before and after the catch. Here, he concedes deep post position far too easily, before readily giving ground once the offensive player makes his move:
And it is not just physically overpowering players who impose themselves on Love in this manner. In the above example of Love being unable to help on Orlando Johnson's drive, note how deep in the paint Ian Mahinmi has him sealed:
Too Lazy
As with most of the players I'm going to look at in this series, "too lazy" is slightly harsh, as these guys generally carry large enough offensive loads that we should expect to see sub-maximal effort on the defensive end at times. That said, this is still really bad and inattentive and Love's part:
But aside from the few egregious examples there are of that, much of Love's slow and/or out of position in his off the ball D seems like the result of fatigue. Generally speaking, he defends the first action or short series of actions on any given play pretty well. After that, he basically settles into the paint and doesn't want to leave either because he's conserving energy, wants to get in good rebounding position or a little of both:
Sequences like the above can be seen on many Wolves' defensive possessions, with Love playing 8 good seconds of defense before heading to the backboard to prepare for the shot going up as well as to save energy for the other end.
How To Make It Work
As appearances might indicate, the largest problem facing a Love/Pekovic big man partnership is how similar they are defensively. Though Pekovic is a superior individual defender in post up and PnR situations, neither provides a great deal of help side rim protection when not directly involved in the play. A sturdy rim protector who is still fleet of foot enough to play in a reasonably uptempo offense would be ideal, so perhaps one of these fine follicled gentleman would be the ideal template?
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