Kevin Love Re-Signs With Cavs

3:22pm: The Cavaliers have released a formal announcement regarding Love’s deal.

3:12pm: The Cavs still haven’t made any formal announcement, but a message with emojis on the team’s Twitter account indicates that Love has signed.

JULY 9TH, 10:07am: The Cavs have yet to make a formal announcement, but Love said in video for The Players’ Tribune that his contract is “inked and official,” as Chris Haynes of the Northeast Ohio Media Group transcribes.

9:35pm: Love’s deal includes a player option for the fifth year, Zach Lowe of Grantland reports (Twitter link).

JULY 1ST, 1:32pm: Kevin Love will re-sign with the Cavaliers, as he says in a self-authored piece on The Players’ Tribune. Love has long insisted that he would remain with Cleveland, in spite of plenty of stories indicating that he would look elsewhere, and a meeting he apparently had planned with the Lakers. It’ll be a five-year deal for about $110MM, tweets Brian Windhorst of ESPN.com, in what appears to be a long-term commitment at the max.

Courtesy of USA Today Sports Images

Courtesy of USA Today Sports Images

“Yeah, of course I’ve heard the free agency rumors,” Love wrote. “But at the end of the day, and after meeting with my teammates (it turns out pools are great meeting places) and with the front office, it was clear Cleveland was the place for me. We’re all on the same page and we’re all in. We have unfinished business and now it’s time to get back to work.”

Love’s revelation brings to a close months of back-and-forth as rumors that Love would leave Cleveland continually surfaced and Love consistently denied them. The power forward did change his mind about declining his player option, as he said in January that he planned to opt in, but opting out was always the more financially sensible proposition, since the max will almost certainly entail more money for this coming season than he would have made on the option, worth only about $16.744MM.

The Lakers and Celtics were most often connected to him, but the Rockets and Blazers were also identified as teams with interest in recent days, and indeed, he seemingly remains a sought-after commodity around the league even in the wake of a down season that ended with a shoulder injury in the first round of the playoffs. He struggled to mesh with LeBron James both on and off the court, but James apparently still wanted him to stay.

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