The Cavs knew Kevin Love was 'heading for surgery,' but he kept playing
Cleveland Cavaliers fans might have felt blindsided on Tuesday morning when news broke that All-Star power forward Kevin Love needed arthroscopic surgery to remove “loose bodies” from his left knee, and would be sidelined for six weeks after the procedure. The Cavs themselves, however, appear to have had a bit more time than their fans to get acclimated to the idea.
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Cavs head coach Tyronn Lue raised a few eyebrows before Wednesday’s win over the Indiana Pacers when he told reporters that he’d kept Love in the Cleveland lineup with an injured left knee for at least three games before the power forward eventually went under the knife. From Joe Vardon of Cleveland.com:
Love, who underwent surgery to clean up “loose bodies” in his left knee Tuesday morning and will miss six weeks, was apparently playing on a sore knee last Wednesday against the Indiana Pacers.
The next night, the Cavs were to play the Oklahoma City Thunder. After beating the Pacers, Lue said he would “probably” rest Love, Kyrie Irving, and LeBron James. Then before the Thunder game he announced that all three would play.
“It was already (hurt), loose bodies were already in there so he just played through it and then after it got to a certain point he got the MRI and he found out it was loose bodies floating around,” Lue said tonight, before the Cavs’ rematch with the Pacers. […]
Lue indicated he did not regret playing Love that night against the Thunder — it was the Cavs’ third game in four nights and fourth in sixth — because Love was “was already heading for surgery.”
A Cavs source later offered Vardon a different “characterization of some of the events,” suggesting that the team “didn’t know there was a problem” with Love’s knee “until it swelled prior to playing against the Nuggets on Saturday.” And yet, Love still played 34 minutes against Denver, scoring 16 points with nine rebounds and five assists in a 125-109 win.
“He played through it, his knee was swollen a little bit,” Lue said, according to ESPN.com’s Dave McMenamin. “Then he came and got the MRI after that third game, and so, now we have the results.”
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On one hand, it would be hard to blame Cavaliers fans for not exactly feeling great about Lue saying he knew Love — a player who’s had left knee issues before — was experiencing knee problems and played him anyway, irrespective of whether the damage that was just repaired had already been done. On the other hand, players play through soreness all the time; if the Cavs really didn’t grasp the full extent of what was going on until the MRI, it’s hard to fault Lue too much for believing Love was good to go.
That said, Love’s six-week shelving puts Lue in the difficult position of having less wiggle room and leeway on decisions surrounding the health and well-being of his remaining All-Stars, LeBron James and Kyrie Irving — on both sides of the coin.
From here on out, should James or Irving start experiencing the kind of nagging soreness and discomfort that Love felt during the first two games before the swelling started, Lue can ill afford to risk rolling the dice and exposing them to injury, too. On the flip side, though, losing Love — who had been averaging 20 points and 11.1 rebounds per game while shooting a sterling 38.4 percent from 3-point range, earning his first All-Star berth as a Cavalier — means Cleveland will have to rely even more heavily on James and Irving to generate offense and keep the Cavs at the top of the Eastern Conference food chain, ahead of hard-charging challengers like the Boston Celtics, Washington Wizards, Atlanta Hawks and retooled Toronto Raptors. (Unless, of course, you believe that discretion should be the better part of valor for a Cleveland team that likely needs only be at full strength to be able to dismantle any Eastern opponent, whether they’ve got home-court advantage or not.)
While James and Irving have both seen their minutes increase precipitously over the last month and a half or so, Lue maintains that everyone will “get their proper rest going forward, even though Kevin is out.” He’s been loathe at times to lean too heavily on Irving with James off the court, for fear of opponents training all their attention on the comparatively slighter playmaker with a lengthier injury history … which could mean some Cavs games on the other side of this weekend’s All-Star break will feature neither James nor Irving. Those … ought to be interesting.
“I definitely have to figure it out,” Lue said, according to Jason Lloyd of the Akron Beacon Journal. “And with the additional guys that we have now and Kay [Felder] and Liggs [DeAndre Liggins] those guys can step up and be ready to play. We do have to manage that and we’ll see what’s right.”
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Dan Devine is an editor for Ball Don’t Lie on Yahoo Sports. Have a tip? Email him at devine@yahoo-inc.com or follow him on Twitter!
