As the Miami Heat prepare to avenge the loss against the Minnesota Timberwolves as they travel just a little bit North to take on the Orlando Magic. However, the team is not without their injury problems as Kevin Love is the next to be on the injury report as he's dealing with an illness. The question is: Is Love playing tonight vs. the Magic?

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Kevin Love injury status vs. Magic 

Miami Heat star Kevin Love in front of Rocket Mortgage FieldHouse.

Even with the returns of Heat stars Bam Adebayo and Tyler Herro, the Heat is still dealt with injury problems as besides the news of Jimmy Butler being inactive, big-man Kevin Love will also miss Wednesday's game against the Magic. He missed practice Tuesday and didn't travel with the team because of a stomach illness according to Ira Winderman of The Sun Sentinel.

While Love is not an everyday starter like he used to be in the past with the Timberwolves or Cleveland Cavaliers, he still is an important part of the Heat's big-man rotation. He has been praised time and time again by the likes of his teammates and Miami head coach Erik Spoelstra for his veteran leadership while also still having juice left in the tank to contribute significant minutes.

He was much needed recently as the aforementioned Adebayo missed the last seven games due to a nagging hip injury as Love and other centers such as Orlando Robinson and Thomas Bryant had to fill in the void the best they can. Just recently, he had a 22-point (his Heat career high) and seven rebounds in the win to the Chicago Bulls last Saturday.

Love confident in Heat's bench

However, if he was to be asked how the Heat would do without him, he would probably say that they will be fine, proven by him praising the team's immense depth that is amplified by the return of Adebayo and Herro. After the win to the Bulls, he said they are going to surprise people that Miami has a “very deep bench.”

“It’s really going to show how deep this team is. I think in ways, we’re not going to surprise ourselves, but we’re going to surprise people in that we have a very deep bench. Guys that can fill a lot of spots, guys that can play different positions night in and night out,” Love said. “But we’re missing a lot of fire power, as well, and we’re missing guys on both sides of the ball. Getting Tyler and Bam back is going to be huge for us and it just gives us that much more depth, especially with guys that mean so much to this team and are incredibly high-level players and mean so much to the organization.”

Love's huge game against the Bulls

He was seminal in that Bulls game as he started the game making five of his five shot attempts from three-point range to lead to the 22 points as said before. Towards the very end, he would have a huge defensive stop on Bulls center Nikola Vucevic that would set up the Jimmy Butler game-winning shot.

“We had to make plays, forced Vucevic into a tough shot. But there are many players that again, like I said, preceded that and got us to a point where we could get the ball into Jimmy's hands and he could make a play,” Love said to ClutchPoints. “It got down into the nitty gritty of that, we were sharing the ball too. We're getting offensive rebounds, we're getting loose balls, we're doing everything we could to get this win tonight.”

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The only plan for Love at the end of the Heat's win

Love is averaging 9.6 points, 6.9 rebounds, and 2.5 assists per game so far on the season. Even after getting the stop on Vucevic, Love only had one plan. He said to the media that its to “give it to Jimmy [Butler]” and get out of the way.

“I'm just trying to get around the rim in the off chance that he misses it, but basically give it to Jimmy and get the hell out of the way. So I mean, that's it,” Love said. “In my eyes, he's the best closer in the game when you get him in that type of situation. We all know who he is. You know, he showed it against tonight.”

 

The Heat are 15-12 which puts them at seventh in the Eastern Conference as before the year ends, they want to end it on a winning streak. It starts Wednesday night as Miami faces the fourth seed in the same conference in the Magic who is coming off of a two-game losing streak, both to the Boston Celtics.