Kevin Love is a Professional Scapegoat

I worked for a short time in the advertising business, and despite the brevity of my stay, it was clear that if you work in advertising, you are there to buy the media and write the copy and edit the videos and that stuff your local Ford dealership doesn’t know how to do, yes. But your more important role in that ecosystem is to be there so that when things don’t go well for a client, they have the advertising to blame — as opposed to a bad product, a poor business plan or faulty leadership.

This is the same reason the Cleveland Cavaliers keep Kevin Love around.

By now you’ve heard they had an “emotional team meeting” wherein Love was accused of faking an illness, presumably to get away from these crazy people for one precious moment of sanity. Love reportedly was able to (mostly) convince (most of) the Cavs that he was, indeed, ailing, but that’s all beside the point. Because if it wasn’t this, it would be something else. Love is there to score and rebound and set screens and all that, yes. But the main reason he’s in Cleveland is so that when something goes wrong, the Cavs have somebody to take it out on.

From afar, Love’s experience in Cleveland looks miserable, and it’s hard to believe he’d be willing to endure it were it not for the presence of LeBron James, who puts his teammates in position to win an NBA championship every year. On the other hand, James also appears to be a fount of endless complaining and passive aggression who also is no stranger to being blamed for things that aren’t his fault.

People will endure a lot when they’re winning, but the Cavs are 3-9 in their last 12 games, and if they don’t turn it around soon they may be in the market for a new scapegoat.