Kevin Love details his ‘easy decision’ to join the Heat and how he hopes to help

With Kevin Love in his 15th NBA season, he’s been through just about every basketball situation. But he has never joined a new team in the middle of a season until now.

Love, 34, changed teams during a season for the first time in his NBA career when he committed to join the Miami Heat during the All-Star break after agreeing to a contract buyout with the Cleveland Cavaliers. He signed his new deal with the Heat on Monday, which is worth $3.1 million for the remainder of the season before he enters unrestricted free agency this upcoming summer.

To begin the acclimation process, Love went right to work on the Heat’s practice court at Miami-Dade arena after signing his contract Monday evening.

“This is something that is foreign to me and new to me,” Love said Wednesday during a Zoom call with a group of South Florida-based reporters. “I got traded in the summer of 2014 and I had time to get acclimated to Cleveland, get in their space, their locker room, be around their guys and just be in the facility, so on and so forth. So for me to get here, as soon as that ink dried, I wanted to get right in the gym and just start working with the team. Get in here, get used to getting even to the arena.

“I’ve been working out a lot and I’ve kept myself in shape, but nothing quite like playing five on five. So it was important to me to get in here, show face and just get to work.”

Love (6-8, 251 pounds) helps address multiple Heat needs as a shooting big who can play as a center as part of smaller lineups when starting center Bam Adebayo is on the bench or alongside Adebayo as a power forward. There’s also the possibility that Love will become the team’s new starting power forward if the Heat chooses to shift Caleb Martin (6-5, 205 pounds) back to a bench role.

“I felt it was a great opportunity for me to come here and just further what the Heat has had in place for so long and help them with size and shooting and rebounding and everything that are strengths in my game,” Love said, with the Heat reconvening in Miami for its first post-All-Star break practice on Thursday before resuming its schedule on Friday against the Bucks in Milwaukee.

Love said he also considered joining the Philadelphia 76ers after his buyout. But in the end he “always looked at Miami as a place that would have been a great landing spot for me” despite the third-place 76ers sitting ahead of the seventh-place Heat in the Eastern Conference standings.

“It was a pretty easy decision,” said Love, who is one of two players the Heat added during the All-Star break along with veteran center Cody Zeller. “Obviously for people, money factors in and location, that sort of thing. But for me, it was looking at the Eastern Conference, looking at what this team needs.

“A lot of things factored into it. But for me, I think it was that role of being able to be myself and play to my strengths on a team that could really use it.”

When asked how important a starting role is to him, Love made it clear that starting “doesn’t really hold any weight for me.” He has started just seven games in his 115 appearances since the start of last season.

“Coach [Erik Spoelstra] is great for a reason and he really communicates and communicates well,” Love said. “He gets the best out of his guys and he’s been doing that since he took the reigns of the head coaching job. So for me, I don’t get worked up about that. I really feel like I just want to step in here and compete, further what they’ve already put in place, and, yeah, definitely see minutes.”

There are three aspects of Love’s skill set that should help the Heat’s struggling offense, whether he starts or not:

▪ Love is an above average three-point shooter from the corners. That’s especially useful for the Heat, which has taken the third-most corner threes in the NBA this season in terms of the percentage of its overall shots but is shooting a league-worst 34.8 percent on those looks.

The Heat has been a bad overall three-point shooting team, period. Miami owns the NBA’s third-worst team three-point shooting percentage this season at 33.4 percent.

Love will be expected to help lift those numbers, as he’s an efficient high-volume three-point shooter from all over the court but especially from the corners. He has shot 40 percent or better on corner threes in six of the last eight seasons, according to Cleaning The Glass.

▪ Love is still an elite defensive rebounder .

Love posted a defensive rebounding percentage (the percentage of available defensive rebounds a player grabs while on the court) of 25.8 percent last season and, so far, 29.8 percent this season. For perspective, that’s better than Adebayo’s team-best defensive rebounding percentage of 21.8 percent this season.

Rebounding isn’t a weakness for the Heat, which holds the NBA’s fourth-highest defensive rebounding percentage and 11th-highest offensive rebound percentage since the start of December. Love should only help in this area, especially on the defensive glass.

▪ Love is known for his impressive outlet passes after grabbing defensive rebounds, which will help the Heat’s offense take a more opportunistic approach in transition.

This is important for the Heat’s offense, which has been bad in half-court situations. Miami has the NBA’s 23rd-ranked half-court offense in the NBA this season.

The Heat has also added just 0.9 points per 100 possessions through transition plays that came off of live ball rebounds, according to Cleaning the Glass, which is the 10th-lowest in the league.

“Yeah, I think Bam, definitely Jimmy [Butler], Tyler [Herro], a number of players on this team, but primarily Bam,” Love said when asked how he envisions helping the Heat. “I think just spreading the floor for him so he can play downhill, get to spots, I can play the five, spread the floor, on the defensive end I can help him rebound. I want to make their lives easier. And for the other two that I mentioned among everybody else on the team, as well, I feel like I can set screens, help those guys play downhill being a four-out, one-in. The way that you play here, those guys being able to get downhill and put pressure on the rim is going to be huge for us.

“I think I definitely complement guys’ skill sets on this team.”

For everything Love provides on the offensive end, there will be a trade-off on the other end as part of a top-five Heat defense that has become the identity of the team.

While Love can’t be relied on to switch on to perimeter players at this point of his career, the Heat can negate some of his defensive weaknesses through its use of zone and other coverages that limit the possessions he’s defending in isolation situations.

Love averaged 8.5 points while shooting 35.4 percent on 4.8 three-point attempts, 6.8 rebounds and 1.9 assist per game in 41 games (three starts) with the Cavaliers this season before giving back $1.5 million in his buyout agreement with Cleveland. He played through a fractured right thumb that he sustained in November, but recently fell out of the rotation and last appeared in a game with the Cavaliers on Jan. 24.

Love admitted the thumb injury affected his outside shooting over the last few months, but he now feels “fully recovered.”

Will the Heat use Love as a starter or in a reserve role? Is this a short-term partnership, with the Heat not holding Love’s Bird rights when he becomes a free agent this offseason?

Those are questions that will be answered in the coming days, weeks and months. But for now with 23 games remaining this regular season and a possible playoff run ahead, Love fills multiple Heat needs and will be expected to help immediately.

“For this to be a third chapter, the Miami Heat, it gets me very excited,” said Love, who spent his first six NBA seasons with the Minnesota Timberwolves before spending the last eight-plus seasons with the Cavaliers.