From five-star high school student to undrafted, Yang Hansen’s teammate Love’s basketball ups and downs

Recently, the Portland Trail Blazers have experienced a large number of injuries in the backcourt. Jrue Holiday, Sheldon Sharp, Wesley, Thybulle and many other backcourt players have been absent due to injuries. In addition, long-term illnesses Henderson and Lillard have given the team bench players opportunities to play. Two of them are two-way players. Contract players Sadie Sissoko and Caleb Love successfully seized the opportunity and stepped forward. Their successful experience can serve as role models for Xiao Yang, especially Caleb Love's experience with ups and downs. Today's NBA Profile will bring you Caleb Love's basketball story.

In the Portland Trail Blazers' away game against the Golden State Warriors on November 22, Love played the peak game of his career. He scored a team-high 26 points under Curry's defense and shot 6 of 14 three-pointers. Zhong thus helped the team win, because he and Sissoko are both two-way contract players and belong to the Trail Blazers Development League affiliated team Mix City. After the game, the Golden State Warriors media said depressingly: "The Warriors were defeated by the Development League Mix City team."

You must know that Love has been waiting for this day for 24 years. He was born in St. Louis, Missouri, USA on September 27, 2001. His father, Dennis, is a sports enthusiast and was a member of the school football team in high school. However, he was unable to enter college due to poor academic performance after graduating from high school. He served in the military and was assigned to work in schools after retiring. He currently serves as the vice principal of Mason Clark High School in East St. Louis, Illinois. He was Love's first basketball coach and personally guided and trained his son to the second grade of junior high school. Later, Love joined the Bradley Beal Elite Team, the most famous AAU basketball training institution in St. Louis because of his outstanding skills.

The Bradley Beal Elite Team, formerly known as the St. Louis Eagles, was established in 1988. NBA players who have come out of this training camp over the years include Larry Hughes, David Lee, Hansbrough, Bulla Deli Beal, Tatum, Garland, Brandon Miller and other well-known stars. In 2019, Beal began to provide financial sponsorship and technical support to the team, and the team was renamed the Bradley Beal Elite Team. Love's skills improved rapidly after joining the training camp.

Love High School joined the local Christian Brothers Academy High School, and his high school coach was Justin Tatum, the biological father of NBA star Tatum. In his senior season, he averaged 26.3 points and 6.5 rebounds per game. , 3.1 assists, and 2.6 steals all-around data helped the school reach the state semi-finals. He personally won the honor of Mr. Basketball in Missouri. This year he became a well-known basketball boy in the entire state of Missouri. The local media hailed him as the new Larry Hughes.

When he graduated from high school, he received an ESPN comprehensive rating of 94. He was a five-star high school student. He ranked third among point guards in the United States, only lower than Cade Cunningham and Jaylen Suggs. He was recruited by many D1 universities across the United States and was eventually coached by Roy Williams, the head coach of Jordan's alma mater, the University of North Carolina. With strong position commitment, he decided to join the University of North Carolina to fill the point guard vacancy left by Cole Anthony. That year, the University of North Carolina also gained a lot from the recruitment of high school students in the United States. In addition to Love, they also recruited five-star high school student Deron Sharp and five-star high school student Kesler. In terms of the same predicted draft, his draft reputation also entered the lottery.

When everyone thought he would have a dream start, reality soon dealt him a cruel blow. Entering higher-level college competitions, his physical disadvantages began to be exposed, and his performance was very average. In addition, coupled with the impact of the mask problem, the team only achieved 18 wins and 10 losses in the regular season, and was eliminated in the first round of March Madness. , Love's data averaged 10.5 points, 3.6 assists and 2.8 rebounds in 27.7 minutes per game, and his three-point shooting percentage was only 26.6%. At the end of the season, Cunningham became the No. 1 pick in the same class, and Suggs was the fifth overall pick. Love's draft reputation plummeted, and his two classmates left him far behind. He could only choose to stay in college to accumulate reputation.

Roy Williams, the team's meritorious coach, resigned during his sophomore season, and the new coach Hubert Davis took office. He still gave Love the absolute main position. This season, Love's data has been slightly improved. He averaged 15.9 points, 3.4 rebounds, and 3.6 assists in 34 minutes per game, and his three-point shooting percentage also increased to 36%. The University of North Carolina also made it all the way through March Madness and finally reached the finals. This year can be said to be Love's most prestigious year in the draft. He was selected in the draft. He had a great chance, but his performance in the final against the University of Kansas was extremely low. He only scored 13 points on 5 of 24 shots in the game, including a missed shot at the end. His inefficient performance made him have the reputation of being elected, but it was not clear. He was still unwilling and decided to pursue his junior season.

At the beginning of the junior season, North Carolina was listed as the No. 1 seed team to win the championship, but the team's performance seriously did not meet expectations. In the end, it only achieved a record of 20 wins and 13 losses, and even failed to enter March Madness. Love's personal data was basically the same as last season. His reputation in the draft declined instead of rising, and he had some minor problems with his head coach due to his over-statistical style of play. At the end of the season, he chose to leave the team and enter the transfer market. He was a hot commodity in the transfer market, and ultimately chose to join another prestigious D1 school, the University of Arizona..

Affected by the special mask policy, Love played for two more years at the University of Arizona, but still failed to produce a dominant performance. This year, he automatically participated in the draft as a fifth-year graduate, because he has attracted much attention since high school and has played in college for five years. Scouts can say that he is well aware of his abilities, so his draft report is very accurate. I put it in the NBA The draft report on the DRAFT website has a comprehensive score of 89 points (low scores in size, strength, leadership, NBA preparation, potential, passing, and intangible assets). He is expected to lose the draft pick, and the draft template is Rashad McCants (the 14th overall pick in the first round of 2005).

Advantages: Explosive guard, confident in playing, fearless, with NBA-level shooting range, able to quickly enter the game, excellent dribbling shooting ability, especially good at pull-up jumpers and step-back jumpers, able to create shooting space through skillful cross dribbling and rhythm changes, dare to take key shots at the end of the game, extremely explosive in transition between offense and defense, able to use speed and physical confrontation to complete breakthrough layups.

He is 1.93 meters tall and weighs 93 kilograms. He has a strong physique and can withstand physical confrontation in two positions in the defensive backcourt. He averaged 4.4 rebounds per game in his fifth season. As a defender, he is very active in rebounding and shows strong concentration on the defensive end, especially when defending the opponent's ball point. Although he is older, he still has the opportunity to become an excellent professional player.

Disadvantages: He will be 24 years old in September 2025. The upper limit of his age limit is the ability. The stability of the game needs to be improved. There are big problems with shot selection. The biggest weakness is that he often chooses difficult shots when attacking, especially the difficult emergency stop three-pointers. In four of the five seasons in college, the three-point shooting rate was lower than 35% qualified level, which highlights people's concerns about whether he can perform effectively at higher levels of competition. Although there has been improvement every year, his game performance is still unstable, especially under heavy pressure, often blindly breaking into the opponent's circle. He is not a true point guard. If he is required to continue to execute tactics, it is easy to make mistakes.

He has certain skills on the defensive end, but he often takes risks or loses concentration without the ball. He needs to improve his communication skills and defensive awareness during rotations. His jumping ability is not top-notch and he lacks NBA-level explosiveness to attack the basket. This will limit his finishing ability when breaking through. Facing many defensive players with wingspan advantages, if he cannot cause foul damage, it will be difficult to score in the paint.

It can be seen from the draft report that the older show has relatively mediocre physical talent, average golf intelligence, unstable game performance, and poor scoring skills. These huge shortcomings made him lose the draft in the draft without any surprise. He was not even invited to participate in the rookie joint trial.

Then he joined the Portland Trail Blazers to participate in the summer league. In 5 games, he averaged 15.6 points, 2.6 assists, and 5.4 rebounds in 26.8 minutes per game, with a three-point shooting percentage of 33.3%. His scoring and rebounding abilities finally impressed the Trail Blazers management and earned him a two-way contract opportunity.

After Holiday was injured in mid-November, Love began to be reused. In the games against the Suns and Warriors, he showed all his advantages of daring to play hard on the offensive end and actively protecting rebounds, but in today's game against the Thunder, the highest-level team in the NBA, During the game, many shortcomings such as insufficient offensive talent, poor defense, unstable game status, and unreasonable shot selection were exposed. He made only 3 of 13 shots in the game and 1 of 8 three-pointers. His post-game plus-minus rating was -27, the second-lowest in the team, only higher than Grant's -29. Of course, he gave Xiao Yang an alley-oop assist.

Looking at Love's career trajectory, from the much-anticipated five-star high school student to the NBA undrafted, the contrast of this situation is very embarrassing, and it is also the cruelest test of a player's character. Currently, Love is not a qualified NBA player, but his hunger for NBA games and his all-out and daring attitude after playing are what Xiao Yang should learn from most. I hope that both of them will have bright career prospects in the future.