Considering the surprisingly large gap between the Golden State Warriors and Cleveland Cavaliers so far this season, we are starting to hear some chatter about revisiting the heavily rumored trade possibility with Klay Thompson and Kevin Love as the principles before the Minnesota Timberwolves eventually traded him to join LeBron James and Kyrie Irving. Tim Kawakami included this in his strong piece that came out on Saturday and it has been in the air in the Warriors’ media room the last few games. 

The best place to start is this: Klay Thompson is playing incredibly well right now. If you want to use more conventional measures, Thompson has his career high in points per game, shooting percentage, three-point percentage and has more than doubled his free throw attempts. In person, Thompson has been more engaged offensively than I have ever seen him and has shown the foundation to justify his increased role. While this appears to be at least slightly above it, if this play becomes the new normal for Thompson, the Warriors should be exceedingly happy with him and the contract they signed him to.

Thompson’s impressive high water marks would be blips on the radar for Kevin Love. Thompson’s career highs in Win Shares / 48 and PER this season would sit second and fourth when compared to Love’s three full seasons as an NBA starter. Thompson’s more than doubled free throw rate has played a huge role in his strong start and it would be the lowest of Love’s career even including this year.

Now, some (including me) will argue that stats like PER overvalue what Love brings to the table and undervalue Thompson because of defense and that certainly has some validity. One of the interesting and underappreciated developments of this season has been a substantial change in Thompson’s defensive assignments. Instead of defending the opponent’s best guard to hide Stephen Curry, Steve Kerr has largely tied Thompson to opposing shooting guards. Warriors beat writer Diamond Leung tackled this topic excellently.

Stephen Curry has also reacted to the challenge of taking on proper defensive assignments with his best season on that end. In fact, in Friday’s game against the Jazz, Kerr usually elected to leave Gordon Hayward (far and away Utah’s best offensive player) to whomever Golden State had at small forward and it worked out well.

For me, the difference between Thompson and Love comes down to two key concepts I use to estimate playoff success: how well can a team prevent an opponent from doing what they do best on offense and how can they adapt to an opponent taking away what they do best.

In the playoffs last year, Chris Paul’s defense helped stifle Curry as much as anyone possibly could and the Warriors struggled to get things going. They still nearly won the series without Andrew Bogut on the strength of their defense and some strong performances, but the team did not possess the creators to function properly when a Curry smothering occurs. Thompson’s play so far has been greatly encouraging but he has not shown the ability to run the show in these circumstances and I would never expect him to. Thompson continues to move along the path towards being an excellent supporting player and there should be absolutely no shame in that.

The most important difference between Thompson and Love continues to be the fact that Love can carry a team offensively. While it may not be the best option for teams like the Cavs or Warriors because of their surrounding talent in the starting lineup, the capability makes a huge difference in the playoffs. When the Spurs can put Danny Green or Kawhi Leonard on Curry to come as close as possible to neutralizing him, Golden State’s best creator in their starting lineup is likely Thompson unless Iguodala replaces Barnes. We saw last year that Iguodala thrives off the ball and struggles initiating so making that the best option proves problematic. I have substantially more faith that Kerr and his staff can create better mechanisms and schemes to reduce these problem spots but they cannot eliminate them against quality teams who game plan with that as their primary goal defensively.

Furthermore, while some have mentioned that having Love reduces the time for Draymond Green at power forward, I do not see that as a problem at all if structured correctly. Green’s strong play with the other starters would open up the option of giving Love quality time with the second unit where he could get plenty of touches and carry the offense. While the Warriors presumably would have started with a more conventional minutes distribution, that solution likely would have become apparent relatively quickly. The move would have also locked up incredible depth at point guard, power forward and center (where Love can play for stretches) for the foreseeable future. That certainty would have allowed Bob Myers and the front office to focus their scouting and roster moves on the shoring up both swingman spots with talent on roster and potential trade targets.

While the Warriors' front office should be thrilled with Klay Thompson’s strong play and the team looking dominant early in the season, the rationale for making the Kevin Love trade still stands.