Player Spotlight: Kevin Love, one of the few complete players in the NBA

Kevin Love

With 0.9 seconds left on the clock and your team down by two points, sane logic would dictate that a Guard take the buzzer beater. But not if you play for the Minnesota Timberwolves. Standing at 6’10’’, Kevin Love is one of the few ‘complete’ players the league has ever seen.

With a daunting figure, he has dominated the paint right from the start of his basketball career. Having come from a family of basketball, his father Stan Love (a former NBA player) was the major driving force behind his son’s success. Kevin has taken his talent and has amalgamated it with his hard-work to reach this far in the NBA.

Having joined UCLA after high school, Love played along with current NBA players such as Russell Westbrook for the UCLA Bruins. His presence in the paint was clearly shown by the numbers he put up. In the single season he played for UCLA, he secured a total of 415 rebounds and also raked up 75 assists. His per game statics were: 17.5ppg, 10.1rpg with FG percentage of 55.9. After being named as the PAC-10 Player of the Year, Love entered the 2008 NBA draft.

Love was drafted as the 5th pick by the Memphis Grizzlies but was then swapped to the Timberwolves after the draft. He was important for the Wolves as they were looking to rebuild the team after the Garnett era. Love had to step up from the get-go and he did exactly that. He finished the season at 9th in the league in rebounds, first amongst the rookies, and was 3rd in total offensive rebounds secured. His dominance in the paint was further reinforced by the fact that in his first season in the NBA, he was able to record 29 double-doubles.

But his reputation as a ‘complete’ player is not just because of what he does near the backboard. He is gifted with an amazing wrist which is seen whenever he takes a jump-shot. He belongs to that elite category of big men who can shoot well. Love has an overall Field-Goal percentage of 45.1.

The most astonishing aspect of his career, however, has to be the meteoric rise in his form from beyond the arc. Just look at the stats for the moment. When Love joined the league in 2008, in all the 81 games he played for the Wolves, he just made two three-pointers and attempted just 19. Now that would not surprise many as he plays as a Power Forward/Centre for the team. But as we move further, in the 2011-12 season, he made 105 3’s from 282 attempts in 71 games. Even in this season, in just the 46 games that he has played for the Wolves – thanks to injury – he has made 105 3’s from 280 attempts.

Along with the jump-shot, Love also has a great eye for the ball. From averaging just 1 assist per game in 2008, Love now averages 4.0 assists per game this season. He also has a unique run of 53 consecutive double-doubles in the 2010-11 season, the longest since the NBA-ABA merger.

With such huge numbers and such high resilience, there is no doubt that Kevin Love is in a league of his own. But what remains to seen is whether he, along with Ricky Rubio, can take the Timberwolves to the playoffs.