It depends if he is actively avoiding contact, or if it's just bad habits like being out of position or not knowing where your guy is. I'd put him in the former category. I wouldn't be surprised if the team asked him to avoid contact so he could avoid the chance of having to get pulled for fouls. If this is the case, there is of course the notion that it'll take time for him to adjust to a different gameplan. I don't want to undersell that, it could take him a whole season to adjust
Last season, Love's fouls per36 was 1.8, 457th out of 482 players. He could stand with bodying up his guy more, get called for more fouls, but the better defense of just covering his guy more closely would more than offset that. Heck, he could double his per36 fouls and barely be in the top 200.
He has very good court awareness, enough to be a good passer and an elite rebounder; it's likely he knows where to be to play better defense, and where to be to not get called for fouls, and he's choosing the latter.