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Originally Posted by Banzai-
The season before joining up with Lebron, Kevin Love ranked 2nd, 3rd, 4th and 8th in the league in BPM, PER, WS/48 and RPM respectively. He was at absolute worst a top 10 player ITL and probably top 5 in hindsight. Obv his stats dropped off next to Lebron like pretty much every other star player in history's have (and that's not even a knock, its just common sense, Lebron does so much there's less for his teammates to do, so they seem worse given we judge players on their production). You're always going to think Lebron has awful teammates if you just look at their production next to Lebron.
C’mon, he was never a top 5 player. One season samples of BPM/PER etc which would have Love ranked as better than LeBron, Curry, Harden etc don’t mean much if they aren’t reasonably consistent. You could argue he was top 8-10 that one particular season but you could say the same for lots of other guys too. Love’s best BPM other than that year was 5.2 and he never again had a BPM above 3.3. Sure, part of it was bulk stats decreasing due to now being the third offensive option rather than #1 - but Love as your #1 option doesn’t result in wins. He was overrated due to being the top option and putting up big bulk stats on a meh team. Nikola Vucevic is a reasonable comp - didn’t quite reach the levels of Love’s peak year relative to the league but finished with a 6.6 BPM, good for 10th in the NBA in 2018-19….virtually the same as Curry, better than Lillard, Towns, Durant, etc. Even this year, he’s 10th in BPM again…would any reasonable person say the Bulls added a top 10 NBA player by acquiring him? Of course not.
A lot of Love’s value came from being a big who could shoot reasonably well (not elite, but respectable) and as the NBA evolved, he kind of got left in the dust. He didn’t magically get worse when he arrived in Cleveland and he certainly wasn’t awful. He peaked as a low-end all-star level player for a few seasons before his most valuable skill set (once rare) became more common and obsoleted him. He sucked at defense which made him more of a liability that could be exploited too.
In reality, he was around a Rashard Lewis level player or something. He had one monster fluke season that he couldn’t repeat and when the NBA evolves it moves quickly. Guys go from being super valuable to role guys to useless in 5 years all the time.