UCLA Basketball: Ex-Bruin Kevin Love Reveals Whether or Not He Intends to Retire This Year

Former UCLA Bruin and current Miami Heat star Kevin Love will not be retiring from the NBA just yet. Love and the Heat were just eliminated from the NBA Playoffs by the Boston Celtics, who took the series in five games.

Before the final game in the series between the Heat and Celtics, Love clarified a report TNT's Chris Haynes shared which stated, "[Bam Adebayo] 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,'" per Anthony Chiang of the Miami Herald.

This report led many to wonder if Love was considering retirement, to which he responded, “I don’t want to retire ... I want to keep playing," per Ira Winderman of the South Florida Sun Sentinel.

“For context,” Love added. “in one of the breaks that we had at the end of the year, it wasn’t recent, 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 Niko, and you have who knows how many years 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," Love said, via Winderman. "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.”

After starring at UCLA from 2007-08, where he was the Pac-10 Player of the Year, Love has gone on to have a great NBA career. He was drafted fifth overall by the Minnesota Timberwolves in 2008, and has become a five-time NBA All-Star while playing for the Timberwolves, Cleveland Cavaliers, and Miami Heat.

At 35-years-old, the sun is beginning to set on Love's career, but he still plans to keep going for at least another year. Love has a $4 million option to stay with the Heat for next year. If they don't pick it up, he'll have to head elsewhere to continue his career.

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