Cleveland Cavaliers head coach Tyronn Lue is hoping to take a longer ride on The Love Boat for the remainder of the postseason.
Lue said on Thursday that he wants to find more touches for Kevin Love.
“Some of it’s my fault because we haven’t really featured him a lot because of the matchups we had on other teams,” said Lue after Cavs practice, according to Joe Vardon of Cleveland.com. “[Love has] been great. His whole mindset is winning and that’s what it’s all about in the playoffs. In this next series, we have some matchups he can definitely take advantage of and it’s on me to make sure we do that.
“Just because [he’s] not scoring the basketball or whatever, defensively and rebounding the basketball he’s been great,” Lue elaborated. “That’s why [the Raptors] went out and got [Serge] Ibaka and those guys, to try and slow Kevin down. Maybe we didn’t feature Kevin enough against Toronto, maybe we showed ’em too much respect and that’s on me. But next round I’ve got to do a better job of really getting Kevin involved and really establishing Kevin.”
Love is putting up just 13.8 points on 9.9 shot attempts per game through the first two rounds of the playoffs. That’s well below his season averages of 19.0 points on 14.5 attempts per game. Granted, the four-time All-Star has still been productive for Cleveland so far this postseason with 9.1 rebounds a night and 40.9 percent shooting from deep. The Cavs’ LeBron James and Kyrie Irving-centric offensive gameplan has also been money, as their 8-0 record can attest to. But Lue has always been one of Love’s strongest defenders, right from the time that he got the job, so the winner of the Wizards-Celtics series can probably expect a healthy dose of amor next round.
