Cleveland -1 (3u) W under 205.5 (3u) L
Kevin Love being ruled out for Game 3 is absolutely addition by subtraction. He's too much of a defensive liability and his offense does not justify how much he hurts his team on D. I expect to see Mozgov start tonight and hold up on the defensive end, RJ/Frye to step up and pick up the shooting production that Love offered, and for LeBron to have a vintage "fuck you im LeBron" game. The Cavs have a better chance to control the pace of the game at home, where they're one of the slowest paced teams in the league. I don't see Steph/Klay finding their stroke on the road tonight, especially when Cleveland will be locking down on defense in the back court at home.
Edit - adding why I think Love being out is a blessing in disguise from one of my comments below:
In this postseason, Love has a decent offensive rating of 114.4 and a not so decent defensive rating of 106.0 (lower is better) for a net rating of 8.4 on a Cavs team thats 12-4 in the playoffs.
For comparison, players who had better ratings were TT (12.9), Amir Johnson (13.8), LMA (15.2), Zeller (9.3), and Pachulia (8.5), with elite players reaching as high as Whiteside (37.1). Keep in mind that playing on a worse team makes it harder to hide bad defensive players as well as find good shots for players without guys like LeBron/Steph to draw double teams
I dont think it's a stretch to say that Love's lack of defensive abilities is crippling the Cavs because this Warriors team is so versatile. Mozgov barely played in the playoffs but in the regular season, he has a net rating of 8.6 over 76 games, 48 of which he started. Even Frye has a respectable 7.2 net rating over 32 starts and has been playing significantly better in the playoffs. Lue clearly hasn't found a way two hide two terrible defenders in Love/Kyrie, so maybe a change in strategy to going big will help