Ignore Rumors About the Blazers Trading for Kevin Love
Suiting up for his (claimed) hometown team would be "special" for Kevin Love irrespective of who's playing for the Trail Blazers. Still, it's safe to say Damian Lillard's presence in Portland makes the prospect of the Cleveland Cavaliers big man continuing his career with the Blazers extra enticing.
"Who wouldn’t want to play with Dame Lillard, first of all? Dame, he's special. He's amazing," Love told Chris Haynes of Yahoo Sports on the Posted Up podcast in early May.
"Portland is always gonna be a special place in my heart. Whether it be at the end of my career, whether it be in six months, whenever it may be, if I was wearing a Portland jersey? That's special. That's playing at home."
A recent report from Sam Amico of Hoops Wire indicated the Cavaliers will revisit efforts to trade Love this summer. Among the 32-year-old's rumored destinations? Portland, unsurprisingly, whether Love plays a part in orchestrating his departure from Cleveland or not.
As suspected, the Cavaliers will try to move power forward Kevin Love in a trade this summer, sources told Hoops Wire.
Per sources, potential Love suitors include the Pelicans, 76ers, Heat, Clippers and Trail Blazers. It is believed Love is hoping to move on from the Cavs, but no trade requests have been made and sources say there’s no reason to believe a request is forthcoming.
In a vacuum, Love would be a good fit for the Blazers. The next frontier of his career is as an offensive sparkplug off the bench, most optimally at center, where Portland will have a hole behind Jusuf Nurkic if the team lets Enes Kanter walk in free agency, as expected.
Love wouldn't do much to shore up Portland's bench defense. Properly motivated, which he hasn't been for the last two seasons, Love might be a more positive defender than Kanter. But Neil Olshey and Chauncey Billups would no doubt sacrifice some defense for the trade-off of Love's ability to stretch the floor, serve as a facilitating hub and post-up mismatches on the other end.
Lillard has never played with a true stretch five before. Slotting Love alongside him, even just for a couple planned stints per game or specific situations of time and score, could propel Lillard to even rarer offensive heights, especially with three more shooters on the court with them.
The factors that will almost certainly prevent Love from coming home via trade have little to do with his perceived on-court impact, though. It's Love's exorbitant salary and the Blazers' clogged cap sheet that make a prospective buyout his only realistic path to Rip City.
Love isn't worth anywhere near the approximate $60 million he's owed through 2022-23, assuring any potential trade that brought him to Portland wouldn't include C.J. McCollum.
The Blazers are already committed to paying Lillard and McCollum more than 60 percent of the projected salary cap over the next seasons. Adding Love's number to those totals would push Portland to more than $100 million in allotted salary for just three players, guaranteeing Jody Allen would be subject to massive luxury tax payments in 2021-22 and 2022-23—with no added championship equity to show for it—if the Blazers re-sign Norman Powell this summer, a must.
Completely upending the roster to rebuild around Lillard, McCollum and Love with inexpensive veterans is a non-starter. That trio wouldn't be title-worthy even if the latter was at his peak, and all three of them will play on the wrong side of 30 years old going forward.
Needless to say, trading for Love isn't the type of move that would make an increasingly frustrated Lillard confident about the Blazers' trajectory. Good thing for Portland, then, that whispers of a potential deal are no doubt rooted more in Love's stated desire to return home than any interest the Blazers have in targeting him.
If Cleveland's efforts to find a trade partner for Love prove doomed as expected, though, ultimately leading to a buyout? Portland would surely be among the first teams to call him, and rightfully so.