{"id":742844,"date":"2022-04-06T10:24:05","date_gmt":"2022-04-06T14:24:05","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.slamonline.com\/?p=742844"},"modified":"2022-04-06T10:24:08","modified_gmt":"2022-04-06T14:24:08","slug":"kevin-love-on-bench-role-with-cavs-i-think-it-can-add-a-lot-of-time-to-my-career","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.slamonline.com\/news\/nba\/kevin-love-on-bench-role-with-cavs-i-think-it-can-add-a-lot-of-time-to-my-career\/","title":{"rendered":"Kevin Love on Bench Role With Cavs: ‘I Think it Can Add a lot of Time to My Career’"},"content":{"rendered":"\n

Kevin Love<\/a> was once one of the NBA’s best players and a key figure in a Cleveland Cavaliers squad that won an NBA Championship. <\/p>\n\n\n\n

As Love has gotten older, he has become more of a role player for Cleveland, but it’s a role he is learning to embrace. <\/p>\n\n\n\n

In an interview with Sports Illustrated’s Chris Mannix<\/a>, Love spoke about the positives that his role as a bench contributor has had on his career. <\/p>\n\n\n\n

“Coming off the bench, I think it can add a lot of time to my career,” says Love. “I feel great. My body feels great. Mentally I feel great. In this league, if you can rebound and you can shoot, you can basically play for as long as you want. I have no [plans on] slowing down or stepping away anytime soon.”<\/p>\n\n\n\n

This season, Love has played in 71 games for the Cavs but has started only four of them, the fewest total of any season in his NBA career by a large margin. The second-lowest total came from Love’s 2012-13 season, where he only played 18 games, starting all 18 of them. <\/p>\n\n\n\n

Coming off the bench hasn’t hindered Love’s production thought, as he is currently averaging a respectable 13.4 points, 7.2 rebounds, and 2.2 assists per game. <\/p>\n\n\n\n

Now 33-years-old, Love is in the latter stages of an NBA career that produced five All-Star appearances, two All-NBA mentions, and was the 2010-11 NBA Most Improved Player. <\/p>\n\n\n\n

While Love may not be an All-Star anymore, he has still played a prominent role in the Cavs’ most successful season in years. Cleveland is currently seventh in the Eastern Conference with a record of 43-37 and is on pace to clinch a postseason appearance for the first time since 2018. <\/p>\n\n\n\n

Cleveland has just two games remaining this season, closing out the regular season on Sunday, April 10, against the Brooklyn nets. <\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Kevin Love was once one of the NBA’s best players and a key figure in a Cleveland Cavaliers squad that won an NBA Championship. As Love has gotten older, he has become more of a role player for Cleveland, but it’s a role he is learning to embrace. In an interview with Sports Illustrated’s Chris […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":431,"featured_media":742862,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_acf_changed":false,"footnotes":""},"categories":[62698,18,63826,62493],"tags":[13006,330],"yst_prominent_words":[],"class_list":["post-742844","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-cleveland-cavaliers","category-nba","category-news","category-newswire","tag-cleveland-cavaliers","tag-kevin-love"],"acf":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.slamonline.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/742844","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.slamonline.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.slamonline.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.slamonline.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/431"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.slamonline.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=742844"}],"version-history":[{"count":4,"href":"https:\/\/www.slamonline.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/742844\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":742872,"href":"https:\/\/www.slamonline.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/742844\/revisions\/742872"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.slamonline.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/742862"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.slamonline.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=742844"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.slamonline.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=742844"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.slamonline.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=742844"},{"taxonomy":"yst_prominent_words","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.slamonline.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/yst_prominent_words?post=742844"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}