Kevin Love getting playing time he hoped for with Miami Heat, but results not there yet
Kevin Love is getting the consistent playing time he wanted when he joined the Miami Heat less than three weeks ago. But the veteran forward is not getting the results he hoped for yet.
In his first seven games with the Heat after agreeing to a contract buyout with the Cavaliers last month, Love has averaged 7.6 points, 7.4 rebounds and 1.9 assists per game while shooting just 39.6 percent from the field and 8 of 33 (24.2 percent) from three-point range in a starting role.
The Heat (35-32) is also an underwhelming 3-5 since Love joined the team on Feb. 20 during the All-Star break — he missed one of the eight games because of bruised ribs.
“Outside of missing threes, I think it’s going well,” Love said when asked about his fit with the Heat following Wednesday night’s 104-100 loss to his former team, the Cavaliers (42-26), that dropped Miami to 2-3 on its important six-game homestand. “Wish we had won more games. This is another game that comes back down to two minutes, and there was the Charlotte and New York game too, and if we win those, it’s a different tone to that question. Need to win more games and things will change.”
Love’s decision to leave the Cavaliers in his ninth season with the organization was based on his desire to play consistent minutes after falling out of Cleveland’s rotation. He received nine straight DNP-CDs (did not play, coach’s decision) before he decided to request a buyout in mid-February, which he labeled as “the hardest thing I’ve ever had to do” in his career.
Love, 34, admitted it was “definitely different” to face his former Cavaliers teammates on Wednesday just weeks after leaving Cleveland. He’ll do it again Friday when the Heat closes its season-long homestand with another matchup against the Cavaliers (8 p.m., Bally Sports Sun and NBA TV).
“I think I was more frustrated just in that I wanted to play,” Love said of his decision to part with the Cavaliers. “I felt like I could still do it. I felt like I could still offer a lot and I think for the bench down there, it’s been up and down for them. So I felt like if I was given another opportunity, I could make an impact.
“So I think it was me having pride in that and just wanting to be out there with those guys. I guess that wasn’t in the cards and I don’t know if it was going to be. It wasn’t communicated after the break. But naturally, I wanted to be out there and be a part of something bigger than myself. I didn’t think I was at the point yet where I was going to sit there and watch.”
Love has definitely found a bigger role with the Heat as the starting power forward. He has logged more than 20 minutes in six of his first seven games with Miami.
But while Love is starting games for the Heat, he isn’t finishing them often as coach Erik Spoelstra has opted for more defense late in games by playing reserve Caleb Martin for all but three seconds of the past six fourth quarters. Love played just two seconds in Wednesday’s fourth quarter and has played a total of just three seconds in the last five fourth quarters he has been available for.
“He’s been a great fit. It’s a short period of time, but he really complements that starting group,” Spoelstra said of Love. “It was a position of need for us. That’s not an indictment on anything that happened in Cleveland. I mean, he had a tremendous year last year. But so much of this league is about fit. For our starting group, he’s a big-time fit.”
Love knows one of the main reasons he fits in the Heat’s starting lineup is because of the space he can provide for the leading duo of Bam Adebayo and Jimmy Butler with his three-point shooting.
Those shots haven’t gone in at the rate Love and the Heat expected so far, as he’s not only shooting worse than 30 percent from three-point range since signing with Miami but also just 1 of 9 (11.1 percent) on corner threes. That’s supposed to be a strength for Love, who has shot 40 percent or better on corner threes in six of the last eight seasons, according to Cleaning The Glass.
“I just need to start shooting like Max [Strus] again,” Love said with a grin. “That’s one of the big things they ask of my game is being able to shoot the ball at a high clip. So I just need to keep working and that stuff will come.”
The Heat needs better outside shooting from pretty much everybody on the roster, as it entered Thursday with the NBA’s third-worst team three-point percentage at 33.6 percent.
Those shooting issues are a big reason why the Heat finds itself in seventh place in the Eastern Conference with just 15 regular-season games left to play. To avoid having to qualify for the playoffs through the play-in tournament, Miami needs to finish as a top-six seed in the Eastern Conference.
Meanwhile, the Cavaliers are in fourth place in the East.
“It’s still certainly an uphill climb to get where we need to be and more anything that’s just not to be in the play-in,” said Love, who took part in the play-in tournament last season as a member of the Cavaliers. “I think here it’s been tough because I mentioned earlier like the New York game, the game [Wednesday] becomes a two-minute game, one-minute game. The Charlotte game as well, those are games that we would hope to get and hope to win, and maybe put us in a different kind of setting or standing where we could be in the sixth seed or that sort of thing.
“So I think that’s the toughest part is because we’re right there and we feel like we can’t keep setting ourselves back. We need to start winning these next several games in order to put ourselves in a good spot and able to not have to be in the play-in.”
The immediate results might not have been what Love expected when he joined the Heat, and he’s still coming to terms with how his Cavaliers tenure ended. But his first few weeks in Miami have still left Love impressed.
“I will say it is tough like after eight and a half years, like moving in the middle of the season and still living out of a hotel,” said Love, who will be an unrestricted free agent this upcoming summer. “But I got to say, like in terms of welcoming me with open arms and a class organization, the Miami Heat have been just unbelievable. I can see why they have that rich history and have had so much success because I mean they have been so good to me, whether it be [Heat general manager Andy Elisburg] or coach Spo or [Heat president Pat Riley]. Those type of guys and then the entire team have just been great — coaching staff, everybody.”
This story was originally published March 9, 2023 at 11:06 AM.
