Kevin Love chooses to sign with Heat after Cavs takeover

SALT LAKE CITY (AP) — Kevin Love says he picked the Miami Heat.

Love said Sunday he would sign with the Heat for the rest of the season once he clears the waivers, a major addition for a Miami team looking to advance in the Eastern Conference before the start of the playoffs.

“It’s Miami, yeah,” Love said in a text message to The Associated Press.

Also on Sunday, a person with knowledge of the matter said the Heat are finalizing plans to add another big man to free agent center Cody Zeller, with that deal to be completed before the team meets in Miami to begin training. after the star break. . That person spoke to the AP on condition of anonymity because Zeller’s contract has not been signed.

Love’s decision was first reported by ESPN.

The 6-foot-9 forward and the Cleveland Cavaliers agreed to buyout terms on Saturday, ending his nine-year run with the team he helped win the 2016 NBA championship.

Over 15 NBA seasons with Cleveland and Minnesota, Love averaged 17.2 points and 10.5 rebounds. He’s averaged career lows of 8.5 points, 6.8 rebounds and 20 minutes per game in 41 games, almost all of them as a reserve, this season for Cleveland and hasn’t played in the last 12 games. of the team before the all-star break.

This sparked takeover talks, and once they were completed, Love chose Miami.

“It would give us another veteran, another guy who made it through the playoffs, another guy who knows what it takes to win and get to where we want to go,” Heat center Bam Adebayo said.

Love is a five-time NBA All-Star, Olympic champion and FIBA ​​World Cup champion as part of USA Basketball, and his combination of size and 3-point shooting ability seems to fit perfectly into the Heat system. .

The Heat will come out of the All-Star Break seventh in the Eastern Conference at 32-27, five games behind Cleveland for fourth place. The top four teams from each conference will have home-court advantage in the first round of the playoffs, and the top six from each conference will skip the play-off tournament to determine the seventh and eighth seeds.

Miami will become Zeller’s third NBA city. He averaged 8.5 points and 6.0 rebounds in 494 games with Charlotte and Portland. The 6-foot-11 center was the fourth pick in the 2013 draft.