CLEVELAND – Tyronn Lue wasn’t talking specifically about Kevin Love when he shared his thoughts on how to deliver unwanted news to players, but the context fits.
“They might not like it at the time, but I’ve always learned in this business if you tell the truth, guys understand and they know what the truth is,” the Cleveland Cavaliers rookie head coach was saying on Thursday. “They might be mad for a second, but they can always get back to understanding and realize that’s the right thing. And if you tell the truth, guys can respect that.”
According to the Akron Beacon Journal, Lue will be having or has had a frank conversation with his embattled power forward before Game 4 of the NBA Finals tips off at Quicken Loans Arena.
Love has been been cleared to play after missing Game 3 due to concussion symptoms that emerged after taking an inadvertent elbow to the head in the first-half of Game 2.
The expectation is that Love will be asked to come off the bench for the Cavaliers, who are desperate to tie the series 2-2 and avoid going back to Oakland facing elimination at Oracle Arena, where the Golden State Warriors have lost only three times all season.
It’s a curious turn of events.
Love was recruited to the Cavaliers by LeBron James as to be part of a ‘Big Three’ including Kyrie Irving, and Love – a three-time all-star with the Minnesota Timberwolves – is in the first year of a five-year, $113-million contract he earned with the idea that he could help James bring a championship to Cleveland.
But against the Warriors Love is a player without portfolio. In the Cavs’ 30-point blowout win in Game 3 Cleveland seemed to benefit from having Love sit with his spot in the starting lineup taken over by Richard Jefferson.
That moved shifted James to power forward where he could match up with the Warriors sparkplug Draymond Green and on the whole left the Cavaliers better prepared to switch any of their defenders to keep up with Golden State’s ‘positionless’ collection of perimeter players.
Green was at his all-around best in Games 1 and 2, including notching a career-playoff-high 28 points in Game 2. But in Game 3 Green finished with six points on 2-of-8 shooting.
The slow-footed Love has had a hard-time finding someone to cover on the Warriors. With Jefferson on the floor the Cavaliers have someone who can put the ball on the floor and make the Warriors pay for being overly aggressive when running the Cavaliers off the three-point line.
The 35-year-old Jefferson scored nine points, grabbed eight rebounds, picked off two steals and made a three-pointer.
In Game 2 he may have been the Cavaliers’ best player in an ugly blowout loss.
“Putting Richard Jefferson in the starting lineup, I just think he gave us speed,” Lue said after Game 3. “I thought he gave us the physicality on Harrison Barnes, and that we were able to slide LeBron over to Draymond Green, which helped us out a lot. We were able to switch pick-and-rolls and things like that. So just being able to get up the floor offensively, pushing the ball, pushing the tempo, and RJ’s aggressiveness on the defensive end.”
From the Warriors’ point of view they wouldn’t credit any tactical changes the Cavs made for their struggles, claiming it was their own lackadaisical effort that was the difference between the opening two games.
“There ain’t no X’s and O’s adjustment they made [that] worked. They punked us. That was the gist of it,” Green said on Thursday. “I continually try to figure out, what adjustment can they make? I didn’t think there was an adjustment they can make other than to play harder than us. And that’s what they did.”
