Cavs’ new mascot isn’t Kevin Love; it’s Lil’ Kev

12:49 PM ET

ATLANTA -– The Cleveland Cavaliers have added a new team member for their playoff run, and his name, or its name, depending on your perspective, is Lil’ Kev.

Who, or what, is Lil’ Kev? First we go to Richard Jefferson, the creator and now guardian for the newest character in the Cavs’ locker room.

“Lil’ Kev, man, he’s a wild one,” Jefferson said before Cleveland’s shootaround Friday morning in Atlanta. “He’s a wild one. Everybody’s got like, alter egos. You’ve got Kobe [Bryant]; he’s the Black Mamba. You got [Michael] Jordan; obviously Air Jordan. You got LeBron [James]; and you got King James. So, you know, you got Kev [Kevin Love] and you got Lil’ Kev.

“Lil’ Kev, he’s special.”

What Lil’ Kev is, literally, is a Tommy Bahama advertisement that was ripped out of an in-flight magazine by Jefferson when the Cavs were flying back from Detroit after their first-round sweep of the Pistons.

Jefferson thought the model in the ad bore a striking resemblance to Love.

“We saw Lil’ Kev in a magazine and we just started giving Big Kev a lot of crap, even though it’s not him,” said Jefferson. “It’s not him and that makes it even funnier.”

The name, Jefferson says, is inspired by Love’s recent State Farm commercial, in which he plays a prepubescent boy as part of a fictional family sitcom, “The Hoopers,” also starring DeAndre Jordan as the mom, Kevin Garnett as the grandpa, Chris Paul as the dad and Damian Lillard as the baby.

“We were messing with Kev and we ripped it out [from the magazine] and we started doing stuff with it,” Jefferson explained. “From there, I just kept the paper and just started doing weird s— with it.”

On the flight, the ad got passed around and several players held it up in front of their face while breaking out their best Love impression.

Jefferson has featured some more escapades with Lil’ Kev on his Snapchat account, RJeff24, where he has posted behind-the-scenes videos with the Cavs since January. Among Jefferson’s more popular snaps was one of Kyrie Irving recently participating in the “Running Man Challenge,” and back in March, a …

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