Cavaliers, Kevin Love continue to stumble

Again, as with any post on the Cavs and former Wolves forward Kevin Love, I will preface things by saying: we should all be lucky enough to "fail" like Cleveland, which is still atop the NBA's Eastern Conference standings and a good bet to reach the finals again.

Love is a key player for the Cavaliers, and he remains one of the very best basketball players in the world.

With that throat-clearing out of the way, though, it should be noted that February has gotten fairly ugly for Love and his team. After an initial surge under new coach Tyronn Lue when he took over for the fired David Blatt in late January, Cleveland is falling back again.

The Cavs have lost three of their past four games heading into tonight's Leap Day contest against Indiana. Starters were benched during a particularly ugly Sunday loss to Washington.

Love, who averaged nearly 24 points per game and made 11 of 21 three-point attempts in the final three games of January under Lue, has had a February to forget. His averages for the month: 15.3 points, 7.7 rebounds, with 39.7 percent shooting from the field — including a poor 30.9 percent from three-point range.

Love will have stretches where he contributes — such as the first three games after the All-Star break, when he scored a combined 68 points — followed by stretches where he disappears, such as the last three games (40 points total, including 2 for 9 from long distance).

For the season, Love is averaging 15.9 points and 10.1 rebounds — similar to last year's marks of 16.4 and 9.7. It's a far cry, though, from the 26.1 points and 12.5 rebounds he averaged in 2013-14 for the Wolves, his last year with the team.

As I've concluded before, Love leveraged himself into a place where he was traded at peak value, and his opt-out threat and subsequent trade for Andrew Wiggins might prove to be one of the best things that ever happened to the Wolves. Without it, they obviously don't get Wiggins and they probably don't bottom out enough to get Karl-Anthony Towns.