As end of 16th season nears, Heat’s Kevin Love not ready to retire: ‘I would like to keep playing’

Kevin Love is in his 16th NBA season and doesn’t plan on stopping there.

The Miami Heat veteran big man made that clear following the team’s morning shootaround Wednesday ahead of Game 5 in Boston, stating: “I don’t want to retire. I would like to keep playing.”

This comes in the wake of a report from TNT’s Chris Haynes issued before Game 4 of the Heat’s first-round playoff series against the Boston Celtics on Monday. With the Heat down in the series, Haynes said Heat All-Star center and captain Bam Adebayo held a team meeting following Saturday’s Game 3 loss in Miami and “challenged his teammates to bring it.”

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Adebayo then allowed his Heat teammates to speak and Love was one of the players who said something, according to Haynes.

“He said it was Kevin Love who stood up and said, ‘Listen guys, I don’t know how much more basketball I have left in me. So we cannot go out like this,’” Haynes said on TNT ahead of Game 4 on Monday. “Bam told me once he stood up and said that, that resonated with everybody in that locker room. Then all of a sudden, they understood there’s more perspective to this series, there’s more perspective to staying alive. It’s not just about each individual. It’s about the collective.”

But Love, 35, said that actually happened a few weeks ago, not on Saturday.

“For context. In one of the breaks that we had at the end of the year, it wasn’t recent,” Love said. “It might have been less than a month ago, I said we have to take advantage of this opportunity and this situation because whether you’re [Nikola Jovic], and you have who knows how many left, or you’re myself, who also doesn’t know how many he has left, we got to take advantage of this.

“It could be one more year. It could be two years, three years, four years, five years. But the truth is you just don’t really know. You could miss the playoffs. You could get beat in the first round, second round, third round. Like no matter what it is, that was more like what I was saying, is we need to take advantage of the opportunity.”

Love has a $4 million player option in his contract for next season to return to the Heat.

While not playing much in the first round against the Celtics because of matchup issues, Love established himself as a reliable backup center for the Heat in the regular season. He averaged 8.8 points, 6.1 rebounds and 2.1 assists per game while shooting 34.4 percent on 4.4 three-point attempts per game in a bench role for the Heat this regular season.

The Heat outscored opponents by 6.5 points per 100 possessions with Love on the court during the regular season.

“I think my message to the guys was like, ‘Take advantage of the time we have together,’” Love recalled. “Even last year, too, I felt like we did that and that run is something that will stick out in my mind forever. I think it will for all Heat fans and players who were a part of it.”

INJURY REPORT

The Heat will be without Jimmy Butler (right knee MCL sprain), Jaime Jaquez Jr. (right hip flexor strain), Josh Richardson (right shoulder surgery) and Terry Rozier (neck spasms) for Game 5 in Boston.

The Celtics ruled out starting center Kristaps Porzingis (right soleus strain) for Game 5 Porzingis suffered the injury during Game 4.