Love's Dominant Run

December 8, 2010 | From: Wolves Radio

"Any knucklehead can score, but it takes brains to rebound." That was the slogan on a shirt I wore almost daily growing up.

It was a red, Charles Barkley shirt and Barkley being my favorite player in the NBA when I was growing up it barley left my body.  

Growing up I loved watching Charles play, he did so many things that just didn't seem possible.  He was listed at 6-6 but was barley 6-4, he was nicknamed the Round Mound of Rebound (and lived up to it at different times in his career) he played with such fire and passion.  If there was a loose ball he was going to get it no matter how many people were going after it.  

Barkley rebounded angry, he was one person who I really felt personified the phrase 'attack the glass' and he somehow found a way to get in good rebounding position every time a shot went up, and if he wasn't, he had the athletic ability and mindset to get to it anyway.

When Sir Charles finally hung it up in 2000 I wondered if we would ever see another player like him again.
To this day we really haven't seen someone who combined the skill, personality and all around game of Barkley but here in MN we are getting treated to some very Barkley-esque performances by Kevin Love.

Love leads the league in rebounding at nearly 15 a game, and on November 12 he pulled down 31 rebounds, a feat that hadn't been accomplished since Barkley pulled down 33 back in '96 as a member of the Houston Rockets.
Not only that but Love poured in 31 points making it the first 30/30 game since Moses Malone went for 38-32 back in 1982.

Watching Love rebound the basketball is not necessarily a thing of beauty.  He doesn't have the athletic ability and hops that guys like Dwight Howard have, or the kamikaze style of Joakim Noah (his closest competitor in the rebounding race) instead Love out-works everyone on the floor to get to the ball.

On the offensive end, when a shot goes up Love finds a way to spin around the guy guarding him and end up with the defender on his back allowing Love the freedom to go after that ball.  Defensively Love always seems to find his man and use his backside to clear space...and then, both on the offensive and defensive ends, Love goes after that ball.  He, like Barkley, attacks the glass.  Some guys try to tip the ball to themselves; others try to rip down rebounds with one hand. 

But not Love, he grabs that ball with both hands and immediately brings it to his chin, elbows popping out as his arms form a protective shield around that ball.  

Once he has made sure that ball is secure, he looks to unleash one of his famous outlet passes or more often this year, hand the ball to a guard to get the team moving again.  

While Love has made a name for himself on the glass, he has also helped carry the scoring load for MN this season by averaging 19 points per game.  

Many of those points come off put-backs from boards he's grabbed and from his ability to shoot the 3 (Love is shooting over 34% from deep this season)

Not bad numbers for a guy in just his third season in the league...in fact they look pretty similar to Sir Charles, who is his third year in Philly averaged 23pts/gm while pulling down a career high 14.6 boards.   

So if any knucklehead can score but it takes brains to rebound, consider Love one of the smartest knuckleheads in the NBA this year.