how much of a difference will missing Love make?

Vincent Goodwill ‏@vgoodwill  6m6 minutes ago
Mike Miller and Iman Shumpert will start for the Cavs tonight with James, Irving and Mozgov. LeBron can play 4, essentially.

aaron, in the snooker I had a £1200 green on Murphy and didn't split it @ high 1.4's when I had the chance

murphy won? :S

nope Bingham won, artixx. my book was Bingham +4.67 Murphy +1200 (I got rid of my stake @ 1.59 thank god)

yes I saw it now on flashscore

The Cavaliers were more efficient on both offense and (surprisingly) on defense this season when Love was on the floor, they rebounded the ball better, and they shot more efficiently. These differences were even further pronounced in the four-game sweep of the Celtics, when the smaller sample size inflated the numbers.

Sure, the Cavs' Defensive Rating (points allowed per 100 possessions) was much better when Love was off the floor than when he was on it against Boston, but how much better they were on offense with him playing (a full 23.3 points per 100 possessions better) more than made up for the difference. The evidence of that is in both the 10.4 point jump in Net Rating (points scored minus points allowed per 100 possessions) and the 14.5% increase in Effective Field Goal Percentage (weighted twos and threes) that the Cavaliers enjoyed in Love's 107 minutes of action.

So yes, the Cavaliers will miss Kevin Love going forward.

This season, Kevin Love earned a nERD of 7.3, the 24th-best mark in the Association. For those of you that don't know, our nERD metric estimates how many games above or below .500 a league-average squad would finish an 82-game regular season with the player in question as one of its starters. Sure, Love's probable replacement in the starting lineup, Tristan Thompson, was no slouch in terms of nERD either (finishing the season with a mark of 4.9), but that means the Cavs' bench loses a solid backup big man and will likely have to rely more on Kendrick Perkins (who had a nERD of -4.2 and is well past the point of being comfortably associated with the words "rely" and "more").

Without Love and his ability to hit the three ball, the spacing in the Cavaliers offense falls apart faster than the plot in Spiderman 3. Substitute Thompson into the starting lineup in place of Love (Kyrie Irving, Smith, LeBron and Timofey Mozgov are the other four) and during the regular season the Cavs were 24.9 points worse per 48 minutes. Their offense isn’t the same as there isn’t the same space to drive and get buckets in the paint. When Love has been on the bench this season LeBron’s usage rate skyrockets — and his efficiency drops.

We saw that in the games the Cavaliers played the Bulls this season — Chicago blew out Cleveland in the game Love didn’t play because they could take their big men (Joakim Noah, Pau Gasol, Taj Gibson and Nikola Mirotic) and pack the paint, clogging up driving lanes for Irving and LeBron. The Cavaliers’ starting lineup (with Smith) was 5.8 points per 100 possessions worse just against the Bulls without Love.

will Love be missed?
yes

are the Bulls good enough to take advantage, dunno really

I think the Bulls can cause problems if they perform

Lebron and Irving are gonna step up to cover the lack of Love

is Rockets and Cleveland a good combo ?

they're fresher, and doubts over Chris Paul and his hamstring

some times he can play crap but this one is a rivalary and he have too play good

:)

probably, yes

aaron, I was tempted to back Mike D over 9.5 points when I was looking through the available bets. left it though, he's already drained a 3 ffs

Bulls on fire

back Bulls now? looks like SBR is right

www.sbrforum.com/picks