Of Love and Obstacles: Is the Cavs Frontcourt too Big and too Crowded?

Kevin Love is coming home—whatever that means, or however varyingly exciting that might be for Ohio witnesses.

Yes, the Cavs' certainly do have "unfinished business," as Love stated in his melodramatic Players' Tribune three-graf tour de force. Love spoke time and time again, both during the regular season and from the bench during his team's Eastern Conference title run, of his intentions to come back to Cleveland. And now, he is officially "All In."

And so is Vegas. Bookmakers recently installed the The King's Cavs as near 2-to-1 2016 favorites.

Yet whether the 6-foot-10 three-ball slingin', outlet-pass chuckin', offensive-rebound grabbin', on-ball defense neglectin' Love completely moves the needle of those title-or-die aspirations remains murky.

As of now, we only know that that the Love version of the Cavs in the postseason relied heavy on the UCLA big man's sweet-corner shooting to take a 3-0 lead over a pesky and atypically competitive Celtics eighth-seed, at least until Kelly Olynyk's snatch-and-grab decided Big Kevin's playoff fate.

But while GM David Griffin is building a team that no doubt would have been a 1990's low-post wrecking crew, this year's Finals raised the painfully-obvious question as to how a team so large can defend a Western Conference champion in a league downsizing for threes and playmakers at a comically rapid rate?

Nobody knows these potential defensive failings better than David Blatt, forced to essentially tether Timofey Mozgov to the bench for nine scoreless minutes in Game 5 (on the heels of his 28 point, 10 rebound showing in Game 4), after the 7-foot Russian was rendered frozen defending the likes of Andre Iguodala and Draymond Green.

So, what happens when Love is out there for 35-40 minutes in the opener of the 2016 Finals? Sure, he isn't Mozgov, but still: is he athletic enough to stay with guys like Iguodala, Green or Harrison Barnes, play after play, Steph Curry pick-and-roll after Steph Curry pick-and-roll?

Not to mention, throughout the playoffs, Cleveland appeared most dangerous with LeBron at the four, Tristan Thompson at center, and some combination of a hopefully-healthy Kyrie Irving, JR Smith and Iman Shumpert flanked around The King's whirling dervish of jumping-skip passes and brute force.

No doubt, these questions are nothing too new. Still, with the signing of Love, coupled with the return of Tristan Thompson (likely coming in at five years, $80 million), and holdovers Anderson Varejao and Mozgov, Cleveland is all but guaranteed to spend roughly $50 million next year for its four frontcourt regulars alone.

Worse still, that logjam of lane-fillers essentially forces James to slot back in at small forward, meaning he won't ever be able to wreak matchup-havoc at point-forward, where the offensive music he orchestrates is at its most organic, free-flowing and effective. Remember, James' fated-turn at power forward helped start the small-ball revolution way-back-when at Indiana in 2012.

In the end, though, the Cavs simply could not afford to watch either Thompson (thanks to Rich Paul) or Love (thanks to Andrew Wiggins) walk.

And sure, they did reportedly lock in Iman Shumpert for four years, $40 million. And sure, Griffin has proven adept at finding rabbits in GM hats around the NBA, amazingly turning Dion Waiters into Smith and Shumpert, and two late future firsts into Mozgov.

Too bad, though, that Cleveland's GM can't conjure up a time machine and magically turn Love back into Wiggins and Thaddeus Young. Griffin seems more than intent to keep going against the grain, and super-sizing his roster at the expense of wing depth. (Lest we forget the Shaun Livingston and Leandro Barbosa-driven protestations of Steve Kerr staring down Blatt's paucity of guards on the bench).

Indeed, David Griffin is going his way, betting on Love because he has to, and hoping against hope he can turn another Waiters-level con with Brendan Haywood's $10 million expiring deal or Varejao in a Splitter-for-Nothing, center-saturated trade market, crossing his fingers to mine the Battier or Allen-gold that Cleveland might ultimately need to raise a banner.

So while Love may very well be a top 20 player right now—and so seemingly overrated by the public he is now, in fact, vastly underrated—he might just be plying his trade at the exact wrong position to compliment the current iteration of The King.