Mozgawd: All we have is 7 guys that can play

[Professor Emeritus]

Kyrie keeps learning to play defense, and he could be so good if healthy.

But they need to trade Love ASAP. He just takes so much away from the defense that it screws over the whole team. Instead, get someone to increase depth at the wings so Lebron can play the 4 without having to have Shump and JR in at the same time. That same player would also enable Lebron to get a breather a bit more often.

Either a typical three-and-D guy, a playmaking wing who can play defense, or a stretch forward who can play defense.

You should be able to get that for Love, easily. Add that player, Varejao, and Kyrie to this crew, retire James Jones, and you have a nice 9-man rotation.

Though since you're not asking for much, it might be nice to get an additional player in that trade who can at least play at an NBA level, so you're not hurting again immediately if someone gets injured. Another backup point would be nice, or another center.

 

[Blankthawtz]

Mozgov is Russia...Russia will CRUSH whoever says it is weak...

 

[Gil Scott-Heroin]

But they need to trade Love ASAP. He just takes so much away from the defense that it screws over the whole team. Instead, get someone to increase depth at the wings so Lebron can play the 4 without having to have Shump and JR in at the same time. That same player would also enable Lebron to get a breather a bit more often.

Yeah we need to stop this 'Love can't play defense' nonsense.

Love is actually a very good one-on-one post defender. The Synergy numbers bear that out, especially in comparison to David Lee: Love gives up .72 points per possession, Lee gives up .88. If you don't immediately grasp the significance between that difference, consider that Love ranked 43rd in the league whereas Lee ranked 156th. As an interesting side note, Bogut was just ahead of Lee at 148th (.87 PPP).

Even the biggest Love skeptic would concede his prowess as a scorer and rebounder -- right before bringing up the defensive end. Here's the thing: It's hard to find statistical support for the widespread notion that Love is a defensive turnstile.

It's possible to highlight stats that showcase Love's defensive shortcomings, particularly as a rim protector. New SportVU player-tracking data on NBA.com showed that last season opponents shot 57.4 percent when Love was within five feet of attempts near the rim, the league's fourth-worst rate among players who defended at least five rim attempts per game.

However, opponent shooting percentage tells only half of the story. Love's reluctance to contest shots also kept him out of foul trouble and opponents off the free throw line. His 1.8 fouls per 36 minutes were the fewest of any regular big man last season (no one else was below 2.0 per 36), and not coincidentally, the Timberwolves allowed the league's lowest rate of free throws per field goal attempt. The trade-off between not fouling and surrendering layups didn't always work out for Minnesota and former coach Rick Adelman encouraged his team to foul more frequently, but looking at opponent shooting percentages without context is unfair to Love.

There's also the matter of rebounding. For individual players, defensive rebounding is not as valuable as offensive rebounding because many defensive rebounds are discretionary -- another defender will get the rebound if one individual does not -- but it's still part of defense, and the Timberwolves have had a better defensive rebound percentage with Love on the court every season of his career. Last season, per NBA.com/Stats, they rebounded 75.3 percent of opponents' misses with Love and 72.4 percent when he was on the bench.

Add it up and ESPN's real plus-minus shows Love as an above-average defensive player, even for a big man. (Post players rate better on defense in plus-minus metrics as compared to perimeter players.) And despite playing Love with another poor rim protector in center Nikola Pekovic, Minnesota was average defensively last season.
As Zach Lowe has described at length in the past, the problems for Love and the Wolves occur primarily because Corey Brewer and Kevin Martin are "serial gamblers". From Lowe's article in March:

Corey Brewer and Kevin Martin, two key wing free agents, gamble their way into crazy fouls all over the floor...These guys are serial gamblers, and a lot of their crunch-time fouls happen before Minnesota’s opponent is in the bonus. But those fouls also put opponents in the bonus.

• Quick opposing point guards can puncture Minnesota’s scheme. The Wolves play a conservative pick-and-roll defense in which Love and Pekovic hang near the paint to corral ball handlers instead of chasing them far from the hoop. It works in the aggregate; neither big is a major plus defender, but they both understand the scheme and approach it with solid footwork.

And really, "serial gambler" is a generous way to describe what Martin is defensively; long before any Kevin Love trade talks heated up, Kawakami described Martin as "...a horrendous, horrendous defensive player, who doesn't fight through picks and often zones out off the ball, leading to more than a few wide open shots when his man cuts to the basket or across the floor."

That porous perimeter defense helps to explain why opponents shot so well at the rim - yes, the Wolves give up a high percentage, but Love and Pekovic are also a) put in that situation more often and b) whether they weren't fouling by design or as a tactic to stay on the floor, they were one of the 20 least foul prone teams in NBA history. Put in simplest terms, playing the Wolves was like getting free runs at the basket if you had capable perimeter players. And that didn't favor either Love or Pekovic, who neither operate well in space nor protecting the rim.

So as a quirky by-product of that system alluded to by Pelton and borne out by the numbers, even the Wolves' opponent field goal percentage overall is a little overstated: they managed to limit the number of points surrendered by allowing the fewest opponent free throw attempts in the league last season despite playing at the fourth-highest pace in the league.

And then when he went to Cleveland, he was the scapegoat for their defensive struggles (when he played next to Varejao and Thompson - who neither are the greatest rim-protectors), failing to realize that a two-man combination of those players is never going to work, as you need a proper anchor with size and the fact that Love was going through back spasms (which he's had in the past) - making him look even worse than people's preconceived notions.

Once he got over his back issues, Mozgov was added and they had credible defensive wings - the Cavs had one of the better defenses in the league (their defense was even statistically better with him ON the floor) --

"During the regular season, the Cavaliers had a net rating of plus-6.6 with Love on the court; without him, it plummeted to minus-1.5, and the team had a lower assist percentage, rebound percentage, effective field goal percentage, offensive rating and assist-to-turnover ratio, plus a worse defensive rating (contrary to popular belief that Love's defense is a net negative). Cleveland’s offensive rating also dropped from 112.7 to 107.9 when Love left the court during the regular season, while the opponent’s offensive rating, effective field goal percentage and total rebound percentage rose with him off the floor."