Kevin Love Is Lost

Displacement has defined Kevin Love's short tenure in Cleveland. This is both weird to watch and probably weird for him to experience: Whatever space the three-time All-Star occupies seems not to belong to him. He is on the block, like a 17-year-old loitering outside a liquor store. He is at the three-point line, failing to spot his suitcase at baggage claim. He is several steps out of position, and his man is behind him, laying the ball in.

Surely, there are explanations. One could call up the tape and delineate the technical and tactical reasons Love isn't flourishing on a team that's still warm from the explosion that birthed it. (Here, I'll start: He is not shooting the ball super-great.) But the dazed terror that has characterized Love's early play in Cleveland is harder to pin down. It is a symptom of the Cavaliers' incompleteness, and also a symbol of it.

Love, you notice when he's not playing well, cuts a dopey figure. He is of the unfortunate subphylum of humanity who jog up a flight of stairs and look like they've just completed a 5K. His cheeks redden and solo cups of sweat turns his bangs into greasy stalactites. The deliberateness of his jumper, as it clanks off the back iron, evokes a man very slowly, very assuredly placing the wrong end of a cigarette into his mouth and lighting the filter. He gets down on himself—plays a few lousy possessions and lapses into a state of lame perplexion. As he loafs back on defense, he seems to be weakly muttering to himself: aw, man or hoo, boy.

You have likely had a job that made you feel the way Kevin Love looks these days. You have been assigned a task of such importance or difficulty that it sat in your gut like a stone. Maybe, cool operator you are, you led that task by the hand out to the hardwood and dunked on it. (Metaphorically.) Maybe you went 83-for-189 through your first 15 games, stopped rebounding like you used to, and everyone got sort of worried about your competence and started worrying that you would leave for a new job. (Again, metaphorically.) To be overwhelmed and disoriented is human. Some of us persevere better than others, or at least fuck up more elegantly.

When you are seized by worry, there is solace in putting all hands on psychic and physical deck and attacking the problem with everything you've got, but Love's circumstance won't allow for that. When he is shooting free throws, the Fox Sports Ohio broadcast sometimes displays his previous-game numbers against whomever the Cavs are playing that night. It being early in the season, most of these stat lines are from Love's days in Minnesota. We learn, quite often, that he went '93 Barkley last time out: 31 points, 14 rebounds, and four assists. We learn this, quite often, as Love is recording his eighth and ninth points of the evening, late in the third quarter. Of course, he knew going in that he was gonna have to make some sacrifices, the announcer muses. The same thing happened to Chris Bosh during that first season in Miami. There's an adjustment period.

It is more like contortion than adjustment. With the Timberwolves, Love's game was expansive. He posted up; he shot threes; he threw one-touch, 60-foot outlet passes; he cleaned the glass; and the offense ran through him for minutes at a time. The Cavs don't need or want him to do all of these things. There is more talent around Love than ever, which means he has fewer responsibilities, but also less space to express himself. If Minnesota was art school, Cleveland is performing the vocation for real. That unfocused virtuoso shit won't cut it anymore. Love's game must attain form and definition.

So he is reforging himself, trying to condense his vast skill set into a shape suited to this new challenge. This is difficult work-what parts of you stay intact and what parts get lopped off?-and Kevin Love is making it look that way. He will probably be fine, eventually. The Cavs' title hopes depend on it. Indeed, this sort of pressure has the power to overwhelm and disorient. It can take time to chase those feelings away, and to become the thing you aim to be.