Sully is a poor man's Kevin Love without the consistent 3 pt shooting. I would take a player that can rebound more, and shoot. They both have relatively bad defense, so either way, its a wash. I would take Love over Sully or KO any day of the week.
There is a key difference here.
Olynyk is 24 years old and is averaging per-36 numbers of 16.6 points, 7.7 rebounds, 2.8 assists, 1.6 steals and 1 block while shooting 47.5% / 35% / 68% and is earning $2.1 million.
Sully is 23 years old and is averaging per-36 numbers of 17.7 points, 10.1 rebounds, 3.1 assists, 1 steal and 1 block while shooting 44% / 28% / 74% and is earning $1.4 million.
Love is 26 years old and is averaging per-36 numbers of 17.5 points, 10.4 rebounds, 2.4 assists, 0.7 steals and 0.6 blocks while shooting 43% / 36% / 80% and is earning $15.7 million.
Olynyk and Sully are basically putting up Kevin Love numbers on a per-36 basis are make as much for a season as Love does in about a month.
Now somebody is going to come back and say "yeh but Olynyk can't play 36 minutes because he will get fouled out, and Sully can't play 36 minutes because of his conditioning, so that's not a fair comparison.
Fine, so lets look at it another way.
Sully and Olynyk are two players.
If you have Sully and Olynyk you're getting a combined 23.6 points, 12.3 rebounds, 4 assists, 1.8 steals and 2 blocks on 45% / 31% / 71% in 49.2 minutes for $3.5M
If you have Love you're getting 16.4 points, 9.7 rebounds, 2.2 assists, 0.7 steals and 0.5 blocks on 43% / 36% / 80% in 33.8 minutes for $15.7 million.
So we've already determined (based on per 36 numbers) that Olynyk and Sully are both putting up pretty close to Kevin Love numbers on a per minute basis. Now we've determined that Sully and Olynyk, between them, play enough minutes to cover the PF spot for the entire game. That means that if you have Olynyk AND Sully you're getting 'pretty close to Love numbers' for an entire game...for less than MLE money.
Or you can sign Love and get Love numbers for only 70% of the game, for $15.6 million.
I know which one makes more sense to me...
Are you guys seriously kidding me with this. Why are people so opposed to hating players like Love? Because their mentally weak? They don't have the flashy passing like Bird or the flashy dunks like Gerald Green or Dee Brown?
I can't speak for others...but the reason I don't like the idea of Love coming here is because Love doesn't really fill any holes or add any dimension to this team that we don't already have.
We already have two slow, undersized, jump-shooting Power Forwards who are incapable of protecting the rim. Kevin Love gives us the exact same thing (just an upgraded version) for about 4x the price.
Love is redundant here - an unnecessary luxury, that offers a relatively modest gain at an exorbitantly high cost.
Considering we, as a team, have a number of significant holes that really need filling (rim protection, outside shooting, a starting SF, etc) it just doesn't make any sense to me to spend almost our entire cap space on almost entirely redundant piece.
Also I know people will say "but what if a rim protector isn't available, we may as well spend on somebody". Well, I disagree. Why spend money just for the sake of spending money? I think every basketball decision made should be an intelligent one - every signing you may should present value for money in some regard. Either a major and quantifiable upgrade over what you have, or else a new dimension added that you don't already have. If we have the money to spend, but no opportunity to upgrade/improve comes along then fine - hold on to that cap space, use it next year when new opportunities arise.
Cap space is an asset, not a liability - having cap space is not going to disadvantage you. Sometimes unexpected things happen (like disgruntled stars getting waived or stretched mid season) and teams with cap space are the first ones to take a run at those guys. For example Houston got Josh Smith for less than $1M, and he's been an absolute difference maker for them in the playoffs.
Based on our team's current makeup, signing Kevin Love just doesn't make sense to me.
I'm not completely against Love as a player - I don't like him as a person, but I think his skill could be very well used by some teams. Philadephia for example - he'd be an amazing fit next to Noel or Embiid on that team and would give them a much needed offensive boost. In Chicago - he'd be a great fit next to Noah and/or Gasol. In New Orleans, again he'd fit awesome next to Anthony Davis.
In Boston, I just don't see it - I think this may be THE WORST fit for Love out of all the teams in the entire league.
Again, I see signing Kevin Love as using up cap space just for the sake of using up cap space. If Sully and Olynyk took up $12m combined then sure, I'd be all for upgrading via Love...you're getting a tangible upgrade and spending much extra. But that's not the case - those guys make $3.5m combined and Love is not '4x' better than either Sully or Olynyk - certainly not 4x better than those guys combined.