CLEVELAND, Ohio — Kevin Love more than doubled his minutes for the Cleveland Cavaliers, scoring 14 points and grabbing nine rebounds during his second game back following foot surgery in Monday’s 107-104 win against the New York Knicks at Quicken Loans Arena.

Knicks forward Luke Kornet drilled a pair of 3-pointers in the fourth quarter as New York cut Cleveland’s lead to one point with less than a minute to play, but rookie Collin Sexton’s two free-throws with 17.3 seconds remaining put the Cavs up by three before a wild finish that saw the Knicks miss a flurry of 3-pointers prior to the final buzzer.

Sexton scored a team-high 20 points while Jordan Clarkson and Larry Nance Jr. added 15 each and newcomer Marquese Chriss chipped in 14 for the Cavaliers, who shot 14-for-44 from 3-point range and out-rebounded the Knicks 56-46.

Cleveland (12-45) handed New York (10-46) its 17th straight loss, and defeated the Knicks for the second time this season. The Knicks have the NBA’s worst record, while Phoenix and the Cavs maintain the second- and third-worst marks respectively. The three teams with the worst records in the league will each have about a 14.6 percent chance at getting the No. 1 pick in the June draft.

Love was in the starting lineup and played the game’s first six minutes, scoring nine points on 3-for-5 shooting, including 1-for-3 from 3-point range. He added a pair of rebounds and two turnovers before heading to the bench with the Cavaliers ahead by five.

“It felt pretty good to get back out there,” Love said. “I feel like I got in some sort of a rhythm. I enjoyed tonight, especially being back home.”

Love re-entered the game with 4:05 left in the first after Nance was assessed his second personal foul. He played an additional 10 minutes, grabbing seven rebounds and connecting on a pair of shots from the floor. Nik Stauskas, signed on Monday afternoon, started the second half in Love’s place.

Love said he would have liked to contribute more to the win by playing in the second half, but admitted that taking a patient approach is clearly the best course of action.

“It’s tough” Love said. “This is the longest time in my career where consecutively I haven’t played. As far as that goes, it’s going to take a little bit of time. There’s a couple easy shots the last couple games that I’ll look at, see if I sped it up or should have taken a little extra bit of time and drove the ball. Just little things like that I’ll look at on film.”

Cleveland coach Larry Drew said the game plan was to play Love somewhere in the neighborhood of 15-16 minutes and let him feel the burn before assessing his status on Tuesday.

“I think he looks great,” Drew said. “He’s doing some things that we’ve really missed over his absence. He seems to be playing with a pretty good rhythm. More than I had anticipated him coming back this early just in two games. We knew he’d be winded, but as far as his movement and what he’s doing out on the floor, pretty good.”

With love leading the way, Cleveland took a 63-48 lead into the halftime break. The 63 points were four shy of the team’s high water mark for the first half of 67 against Charlotte on Nov. 13. Back-to-back threes by Stauskas and Nance pushed the Cleveland advantage to 17 with 9:28 left in the third. But the Knicks battled back as Damyean Dotson and Kevin Knox ignited an 11-0 run in the next five minutes that cut the lead to 6.

Drew said adding shooters such as Stauskas, who struggled going 1-for-7 from 3-point range, and even the surprising Chriss who was 2-for-3 from beyond the arc,

“We’re a different ball club when we can consistently make threes because it just opens up your defense,” Drew said. “It opens up driving lanes because the defense has to run you off the three. Those guys we know are capable of making threes and it jut opens our offense up."

Kadeem Allen led New York with 25 points off the bench in 32 minutes while Knox added 13 and DeAndre Jordan chipped in 12 with 10 rebounds.