With Kevin Love’s impending free agency just a year away, teams all over the NBA are starting to ask themselves if they have what it takes to acquire the power forward and convince him to stay in their city. While trading for Love now and signing him later are two different things, it’s something that all NBA fans are thinking about, even if they don’t want to admit it.
Since I’m a Bulls fan and Heat fans hate me anyways, I’ll be the one to ask the question — can the Miami Heat get Kevin Love to come to South Beach?
Before you laugh it off, just consider how real of a possibility it actually is. Sure, the money is a real hangup here, but we all know that the NBA salary cap is more of a guideline than anything else and no one who wants to win follows it.
A. Sherrod Blakely from CSNNE.com noted that Love doesn’t want to just play in a ‘hype city’ and he specifically named Miami in his little spiel when referencing what he’s been hearing about Love.
"“He (Love) is not one of those guys that’s saying, “I want to go to Miami. I want to go to L.A.,” the hype cities,” Welsh said. “Now would he prefer L.A.? His girlfriend lives there. She’s an actress. He went to college there (at UCLA). He was born there.”"
I’m glad he mentioned Miami because the city is more than just ‘hype’ like what was seemingly suggested. Kevin Love wants to play for a winner and he’s apparently so desperate that he’s willing to play for anyone with a fighting chance. So why not Miami? If the Heat’s Big 3 are indeed living on borrowed time, then why not trade for Love in the offseason and run with a new Big 3 or even a Big 4.
Think about what it would take to trade for Love. A first round draft pick, Norris Cole, Udonis Haslem and probably some other pieces or maybe even just a first, Bosh and maybe Chalmers or Cole. For that you’d get Love alongside LeBron, Wade and possibly Bosh for an entire year — you could literally play sacks of sand next to that starting four, you wouldn’t even need a fifth player.
And if Bosh is needed in the deal then you replace him in the lineup with Love and this whole Big 3 thing can keep on trucking for years to come. Is it realistic, maybe not but it’s certainly not impossible and if the Heat want to remain dominant and then acquiring Kevin Love should be more than just a pipe dream.