The News Herald (Willoughby, OH)
No easy solution for Cavaliers and Love
If there is a more perplexing athlete than Kevin Love on this planet, he must be playing some obscure sport on another continent. Jeff Schudel on the Cavs’ superstar and his future in Cleveland.
If there is a more perplexing athlete than Kevin Love on this planet, he must be playing some obscure sport on another continent. It is safe to say the mystery person has never been seen on ESPN, not even at 3 a.m. on a Wednesday.
The Cavaliers forward had his best game of the season on May 12 when he scored 30 points and grabbed 14 defensive rebounds to help beat the Celtics, 102-94, and end an 11-game losing streak.
But in typical fashion, Love followed that performance by sitting out the May 14 road game with the Washington Wizards because he wanted to rest his strained right calf. The Cavs lost, 120-105.
Love has played in 25 of 71 games this season. The campaign ends, mercifully, on May 16 with a 7 p.m. game at Brooklyn.
Who knows where the Cavaliers would be in the NBA East standings if Love played close to the way he played against the Celtics for even 60 percent of a full season? As it is, they are 22-49, 13th in the East.
The games that stand out vividly on the negative side are more numerous. Love played 22 minutes in a game with the Wizards on April 30 and didn’t take a shot. One night later he scored 25 points in a game against the Miami Heat, but the Cavaliers were outscored by 30 points in the 29 minutes he was on the floor. He scored 18 points in a game with Portland on May 5. The Cavs were outscored by 45 points while he was playing. The Cavaliers lost those three games, 122-93, 124-107 and 141-105.
Then there was the infamous incident on April 26 in the game against the Raptors when Love casually slapped an inbounds pass to no one in particular rather than pass the ball to a teammate. The Raptors got the loose ball and turned it into a threepoint play.
“I love this team first and foremost. I know I (messed) up, and I apologized for that,” Love said on Zoom the next day. “I don’t go out there intending to upset anybody, to embarrass myself to embarrass the organization, because I feel like I’m a part of something bigger than myself here.”
This isn’t about one moment of poor judgment in the game with the Raptors. Love has been unpredictable and injured much of the three years he has been milking the max contract that makes him nearly impossible to trade.
Love is from Portland. He spoke dreamily about someday playing for the Trail Blazers on a podcast with Chris Haynes before the Cavs played Portland earlier this month.
“Portland is always going
to be a special place in my heart,” he said. “Whether it be at the end of my career, whether it be in six months, whenever it may be … if I was wearing a Portland jersey … I mean, that’s special. That’s playing at home.”
Love will be 33 before next season begins. He has two years remaining on a contract that guarantees him roughly $30 million next year and $29 million in 2022-23.
“If Kevin Love wants to get out of Cleveland he has to show teams he can play hurt and play hard more than once in a while,” a league source said one night in late March when Love was sidelined with the calf injury that forced him to miss most of the season.
Love proved in the Boston game what he could do when he puts his mind and body to it. But there have been far too few of those games. The Cavs are headed to the draft lottery again. They are not one player away from contending for the NBA title.
Next year is going to be the same story all over again with Kevin Love.
Indians memories
The Indians and Reds were rained out in their game scheduled for May 9 at Progressive Field. Still needing a story, I asked Twitter followers to respond with memories of the first game they attended.
I squeezed as many replies into the story as I could without making it unwieldy. Some readers responded after the story appeared, so I am adding them to this addition of Cleveland Beat.
• This reader did not want his name used: “I loved baseball and my girlfriend hated it. We would go to Sunday doubleheaders at Municipal Stadium. We sat in the center-field bleachers and had the entire section to ourselves. I would watch the games and she got hours of sunbathing. It was a win-win. (P.S. We got married, too).”
• Greg B: “I was 7. My father and I went to see the Indians play the Tigers. At the time the players interacted with fans.
My dad talked with the players over the foul-line fence as if it was just a day.”
• Ron Hollowell: “My first game at Cleveland Stadium was June 11, 1970, Indians vs. Athletics. I remember the brilliant colors I saw (green grass and the red, white, and blue 3D number 9 on the back of Tribe first baseman Duke Sims’ uniform). Roy Foster hit a two-run walk-off home run in 10th.”
• Jim Battershell: “First year of Little League baseball in the mid ‘60s. LL players from around Ohio got to walk the infield, pregame. I was 6 feet from Rocky Colavito and was speechless. Lol”
• Dan Denihan: “Earliest I recall is a game in maybe ‘71. was about 8 years old. Sam McDowell pitched for the Tribe. I don’t recall who won.
It is a cherished memory with my dad in the old stadium, listening to him tell me about the nuances of the game as I had my first ballpark dog.”
• Wiseman once said: “I almost caught Canseco’s ball that reached the bleachers! It went off my fingertips, & would have been the only ball ever hit in the bleachers at old municipal stadium! It was about a 470-foot blast . ... Game was on ESPN ‘Sunday Night baseball.’ “
Newsome switches classes
Most student-athletes attending Northwestern go there to get an education at one of the most prestigious universities in the country and extend a playing career likely to end in four years. That description does not fit Browns rookie cornerback Greg Newsome II.
“While I was at Northwestern, I considered myself a professional athlete with the way I took care of my body and doing extra things,” Newsome said May 14 after the first day of rookie minicamp. “I kind of already had that idea in my head. Obviously I have even more time to focus on my body and watch film. The difference is not too much. It is just the fact now I don’t have
schoolwork to do.”
Exactly how Newsome plus cornerbacks Greedy Willams and Troy Hill fit into defensive coordinator Joe Woods’ plans will be followed closely in training camp.
Left cornerback Denzel Ward has a starting spot nailed down and Hill signed a four-year, $24 million contract to presumably be the slot corner. That leaves Newsome and Williams fighting for the right cornerback job. Williams has NFL experience, but he has nerve damage in his right shoulder. Plus, he was a secondround pick by John Dorsey in 2019 and Andrew Berry drafted Newsome in the first round in 2021.
“Obviously, I would love to start at corner,” Newsome said. “I think any corner in the room would love to be a starting corner. At the end of the day, if I’m helping the team win, that is all I can ask for.
“I’m definitely going to try to learn from those guys like Greedy, Troy Hill and Denzel. There are a lot of guys in that room so I’m just going to try to learn from them and get better each and every day so on Sundays, whatever coach needs me to do, I will be able to do it.”
Newsome played in 17 games over three seasons at Northwestern. He missed eight games with an ankle injury in 2018 and three more in 2019 and 202 with an ankle injury. He missed the Big Ten championship game with a groin injury.
I didn’t know that
... until I read my Snapple bottle cap.
A rhinoceros horn is made of compacted hair. ... Plants, like humans, can run a fever if they are sick. ... Tennis was originally played with bare hands . ... When grazing or resting, cows tend to align themselves with the magnetic north and south poles . ... Mint comes in 30 varieties . ... Astronauts get taller in outer space.