Tetsujin
The Game Thread Dude
Such as?
Let us not forget that both Cuz and Love have had unfortunate run-ins with an opponent's groinal area. Last offseason onwards (generally any time since the stench of Maloof was fumigated from the practice facilities), Demarcus hasn't really had any serious behavioral run-in off the court and, on the court, showed considerable restraint in the face of continued scrutiny from the refs.
Now if you want to make a Love for Demarcus move on the basis of actual basketball stuff, then fine, especially if you find a way to account for perhaps the least effective defender of all the "stars" in the modern NBA.
But, thus far, most of your reasoning appears to be the incredibly unfounded DEMARCUS-COUSINS-IS-A-BAD-HUMAN-BEING argument. And that's completely disregarding the fact that we'd be dumping off four years of team control on our franchise big man for an expiring contract that's pretty much guaranteed to be on the first train to New York come the next offseason (Is there even a train that goes all the way to New York?). And really, free throw percentage is probably the last thing we should be worrying about when we talk about big men. DeAndre Jordan is awful at free throw shooting. Doesn"t mean I wouldn't want him on my team the second he hit the market.
You will not get any arguments from me in regards to the passing point as Love is probably the best passer from the big man spot since Brad Miller was working out of the elbow for us (though personally, I think Joakim Noah is a better pure ball sharer than Love). That said, Demarcus is certainly no slouch in that department himself (and considering the collection of incapable finishers he was passing to this season, it is within the realm of reason to assume his assist numbers will continue to improve in the coming years) and, for what it's worth, he averaged more assists this year in his 23-yr-old season than Love did in his 23-yr-old season (2.9 assists to 1.9 assists). And, as has been pointed out by much more qualified posters than I, Demarcus's turnover numbers are not that out of line with other elite big men at the early stages of their careers (Hell, Kareem was averaging 3.6 TOs per game when he was 32 years old.)
So really, the rather banal debate of Love v. Cousins comes down to defense, in which Demarcus wins by a landslide simply by the virtue of actually showing some effort on that end as opposed to Kevin Love's typical strategy of waiting for the rebound, team defense be damned.
Both are certainly talented but at the end of the day, I'd take the 6'11", 275 pound 23 year old over the 6'10", 260 pound 25 year old on an expiring contract.
