Message to Love: Be like Bosh
— -- Last season, in the middle of a championship run, Chris Bosh was talking about Kevin Love.
This was before LeBron James left for Cleveland, well before Love was traded to Cleveland from Minnesota after six losing seasons. Bosh was talking about Love because he saw himself in Love's shoes at one point in his career. When Bosh left Toronto for Miami, he too was anxious to get rid of the pesky label as a stat-stuffing big man who didn't have what it takes to win titles.
"I'm sure he's to the point, give me 18 points every time," Bosh said in June. "But it'll be a learning curve when he has to do it. It'll be very, very, very hard on him because you're used to scoring 25 a night. A seven-point drop? That's a lot. When you give up something like that, it's like, 'I can do more.'"
Flash forward to last Friday when Kevin Love told Cleveland.com, "I think it's one of the toughest situations I've had to deal with." Love recently said he had been reduced to a "spacer." Love also believes "there's no blueprint for what I should be doing."
While every situation is unique, that doesn't mean there isn't a blueprint to follow. For Love, Bosh is the blueprint. He made the very same personal sacrifice that Love is dealing with at the moment, the same ego-check that playing with a title-hungry LeBron James requires.
"It's just a different culture, man," Bosh told ESPN Insider. "It's pretty much how bad do you want to win? There are going to be things extremely frustrating about it. It's going to be a bunch of ups and downs."
On Wednesday, the two teams meet ahead of the All-Star break. Bosh and Love will take the court against each other, but they've shared common ground for a while now.
"He's just now getting started," Bosh said of Love's journey with the Cavs. "They've got a long way to go."
The similar numbers
Bosh was off by two points. Love's scoring average has dropped nine points this season, not the seven points that Bosh predicted back in June while Love was still in Minnesota.
Love averaged 26.1 points per game as a member of the Minnesota Timberwolves last season and started for the Western Conference All-Star team. This season, that average has fallen to 17.1 points and, as of Wednesday, he wasn't voted to this season's Eastern Conference All-Star squad.
In 2010-11, Bosh felt the same precipitous decline in scoring responsibility when he joined James and Dwyane Wade. Back then, Bosh was 26, the same age that Love is now, and held similar title aspirations.
"Offense was the biggest adjustment," Bosh said. "Defense, you just have to want to do it and that's hard enough. But it was moreso offense. Because you feel that you don't have the rhythm. Before you could start off the game with five post-ups in a row, boom. OK, what kind of night is it?"
Like Love, Bosh struggled to find his way in that first season. He hit the 20-point plateau just once in his first 10 games in a Heat uniform. His post-up touches had all but vanished as he had to share the ball with two other All-Stars. On Feb. 24, 2011, Bosh infamously shot 1-of-18 for seven points in a loss to Chicago during a stretch in which the Heat lost five of six games. Remember the whole "CryGate" situation? That happened in March of that first season.
The Heat navigated through rocky waters that first season with the big three. It coincided with Bosh's season-long adjustment to find his role on offense, often taking a backseat to two other ball-dominant superstars.
"If you get a post touch and you get double-teamed, then you don't see another post touch for another two quarters," Bosh said on Tuesday. "You just don't feel like you have a rhythm or you don't have the ball in your hands as much. He's playing with two guys who are going to dominate the ball. That's how it is."
Both Love and Bosh saw their efficiency numbers decline in their first season with James and another ball-dominant guard (in Love's case Kyrie Irving). With fewer touches in the paint, Bosh saw his field-goal percentage drop from 51.8 percent to 49.6 percent along with fewer trips to the free-throw line for easy points. Love has seen his field-goal percentage plummet from 45.7 percent last season to 42.7 percent, largely due to a decline in 3-point conversion rate.
"That's tough, too," Bosh said. "Finding out the chemistry is one thing, but usually everybody has to find their chemistry around you. You need to find your chemistry around me? It's easier. But when you're the one who has to compromise and adjust to them, it's a different monster."
Similar but different touches
Who has compromised their offensive game more? STATS LLC's SportVU player-tracking data can help us paint a picture beyond the typical per-game statistics. Even though the data was only tracked league-wide starting last season, we can look at Bosh's 2013-14 season to compare his touches with Love's.
This season, Love has averaged 39.2 frontcourt touches per game, which ranks 12th in the NBA among big men. Last season? Love saw 49.7 frontcourt touches on a nightly basis, which ranked second in the NBA behind only Blake Griffin. That represents a decline of slightly more than 20 percent.
How does that compare to Bosh? Without having to share the ball with James, Bosh has seen his frontcourt touches soar 43 percent up to 45.5 frontcourt touches per game from 31.9 touches last season. Put it together and you'll find that Bosh saw the ball about five fewer times last season compared to Love this season on a per-36-minute basis. That's not to say Love has had it easier than Bosh, but there's that blueprint again.
Another similarity between Bosh and Love: They both became floor-spacers rather than paint mavens. Bosh migrated to the perimeter in recent seasons to help balance the Heat's "pace and space" offense orchestrated by coach Erik Spoelstra. However, they're spacing the floor in different ways. To help illustrate this, STATS LLC passed along this heat map that shows us where Bosh and Love have caught their passes from James.
Love has recently praised James' emphasis on getting him the ball early and often, calling it "huge" for his confidence. These touches matter. As you can see, the magic between Bosh and James came from three primary areas: top of the key, at the basket and in the right corner (from the perspective of the point guard bringing the ball up). Love almost never gets the rock at the rim. Instead, he's gotten post-ups on the left block and corner 3s. According to SportVU tracking, James is feeding Love in the corners more than twice as often as he did Bosh last season. The paint area for Love is almost spotless.
This is where Love has really struggled to find his rhythm. Looking at Bosh's 2010-11 season, we can see that Bosh was one of the most efficient pick-and-roll threats when he dove to the rim, shooting 68.6 percent in this area. Love, however, has been atrocious there. He has scored a measly 15 points on 19 rolls to the rim in which he caught the ball and made a scoring play. According to Synergy tracking, Love's pick-and-roll efficiency is the second worst among the 33 bigs with at least 100 pick-and-roll actions (only Luis Scola has fared worse).
James and Love have to develop better chemistry there. And Love's weight loss coupled with his more grounded game could be a prohibitive factor, but Irving found Love on two beautiful looks at the rim on pick-and-rolls in Sunday's win over the Lakers. Last season, Love didn't have much trouble at all finishing in the paint on pick-and-roll actions (he scored 62 points on 46 plays, shooting 60 percent).
Trading places
The irony in this whole thing is that Bosh's season has been fraught with adversity, too. As much as Bosh can offer wisdom and I-told-you-so's, it's no secret that the Miami Heat are 22-29 this season as Bosh has shouldered more of the responsibilities. Wade has missed time and Josh McRoberts, a key piece, is out for the season.
While Love has struggled to fit into a winning environment, Bosh has struggled to move back into a No. 1. role and find team success. The tables have turned.
"It's been difficult, man," Bosh said about the Heat's struggles. "You know, that's one thing about this game, whether you win or lose, it'll be stressful. It is what it is. You're going to have to deal with those things."
This season, Bosh hasn't been able to bring it on both ends of the floor like he did in previous seasons as the Heat's anchor. Last season, Bosh measured as the best pick-and-roll defender in the NBA, according to Synergy tracking, and real plus-minus gave him a plus-3.0 rating defensively, one of the better rates in the league. But that's tougher to do when tasked with scoring 25 a night in Wade's absence.
Love doesn't have the same excuse. He ranks 40th among power forwards this season in defensive RPM and routinely avoids contests at the rim. Perhaps this is what James meant when he cryptically insinuated (or not) that Love had to "fit in" rather than "fit out." Sacrifice isn't just an offensive construct as Bosh found out.
On the whole, Bosh fit in a bit easier with James and the Heat in their first season together. With the Cavs winning 13 of their last 14 games, Love is seeing how a little sacrifice can go a long way. But as Bosh says, the Cavs still have a long way to go. Relative to Bosh in 2010-11, Love has seen the bigger drop in productivity, shot efficiency and the team's defense still ranks bottom 10 in the league. The blueprint is there. Swallow pride, space the floor and bring it defensively. Like a Bosh.
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