CLEVELAND — Kevin Love declined an interview for this story.
This may seem an odd way for an article to open, since that's the sort of sentence that's typically stuck somewhere deep in the belly of a piece, a parenthetical aside meant to explain what seems a glaring oversight: the author's inability to include the profile subject's point of view. But in this case, it feels proper to get it out there early, not with the slightest bit of scorn or spite, but because his acceptance—through a Cavaliers' spokesman—actually wouldn't have made the slightest bit of sense. It simply wouldn't square with his reticence to reveal much about himself since coming to the Cavaliers.
Since that trade, one strongly endorsed if not orchestrated by LeBron James, the former franchise face of the Timberwolves has had quite the bumpy ride, whether standing out on the fringe of the Cavaliers' offense or sitting in the center of a media storm—subjected to an army of word-parsers, pop psychologists and character caricaturists. Love, who spoke on the first day of training camp of the need to "keep the circle tight" amid the prying outsider eyes, hasn't hid his contempt for the circus that since has come. It's been apparent to everyone regularly around the team, as his eyes have burned holes in locker room carpets from coast to coast, rarely raised to fully acknowledge the many queries—concerning touches or shots or Twitter accounts—that he considers ridiculous.
"He's shut down to the media," one long-time acquaintance said.
"It's beyond just the media," another close observer said. "He's incredibly guarded."
So there was little shot that the 26-year-old power forward would open up as the playoffs did, not to a stranger, and not after one of his braver forays into the public square—on behalf of a "Built with Chocolate Milk" campaign—backfired badly when he strayed from a careful string of bland cliches. When he said during his radio tour that he was "not best friends" with James and would vote for former UCLA teammate Russell Westbrook as NBA MVP, it fueled enough "hot takes" to melt a decade of Ohio snow. Naturally, there's no need, with so much serious basketball ahead, starting with his playoff debut Sunday against the Boston Celtics, to fan any additional flames.
But here's the thing about the postseason:
It cares not how little you'd like to reveal about yourself.
"The playoffs expose you," one NBA veteran said. "For better or worse. Some guys can handle it, some can't. So we'll see."
The urgency. The intensity. The press. The pressure. The glory. And, inevitably, for just about everyone, but particularly those in his position—third option on a team with championship aspirations—the blame.
What will we learn about Kevin Love?
Few, even those camped solidly in his corner, even those who wear the same uniforms, can be absolutely sure. The only surety is scrutiny, about his performance and his priorities, his role and his relationships. In the end, this is actually just the beginning, and not much has mattered before now.
The past, for Love, isn't prologue. It's merely interesting.
In lieu of Love's cooperation, Bleacher Report connected with more than a dozen people intimately familiar with some part his career curve, whether this season in Cleveland, the six prior in Minnesota or his single All-American collegiate campaign at UCLA. Interview subjects were allowed to speak on background, for greater honesty, and many did, though a handful were thoroughly comfortable attaching their names.
That included Mychal Thompson, who won two championships (both with the Lakers) during a career that spanned from 1978 to 1991, and who has settled into a second career as a radio talk show host and game analyst. He's also a famous father, with his son Klay now a star for the Western Conference's top-seeded Golden State Warriors. Klay was born in Los Angeles but spent his childhood and adolescence in Oregon, close to the family of former NBA role player Stan Love. The Thompson kids and Love kids played at each other's houses, and Kevin played on some of the same teams as Klay and Klay's older brother Mychel, with Klay believing that Kevin was even better at baseball than basketball ("the best in the state for his age," Klay said). Kevin still has their team photos, and Mychal still has vivid, glowing memories of Kevin as a kid.
"Always very personable," Mychal said. "He was always bigger and stronger than everybody else, but he never used that in a bullying way. He was very nice, very kind to all of his friends. Just a fun-loving kid, yes sir, no sir, very respectable kid. Stan and Karen did a very great job in raising a fine young man, from his childhood days. All the Love children were like that, Collin to Emily, they are all very respectful kids. He's the same way in his adult life, just a great human being, very respectful to everybody, and just an intelligent young man."
Some recollections came flooding back last summer, when the Thompsons and Loves were put in a "strange" (Mychal's word) and "crazy" (Klay's word) situation: rumors, very real rumors, that Klay and Kevin would be traded for each other, Klay to Minnesota and Kevin to Golden State.
"Who would have thought, at that time, back when they were having sleepovers, that these two kids, who only care about eating pizza and pancakes, would be traded for each other someday," Mychal said. "That was weird."
It didn't happen, of course. The Warriors wisely kept Klay, who has emerged as an All-Star, one-half of the league's best backcourt on what has been the league's best team. The Timberwolves dealt Love to the Cavaliers instead for a package featuring the No. 1 overall pick, and likely Rookie of the Year, Andrew Wiggins. Still, when Klay and Kevin saw each other at USA Basketball camp, of course it came up.
"We had a laugh about it," Love said earlier this season, during a rare animated media session, just prior to the Cavaliers facing his friend and the Warriors.
"If it was going to happen, it was going to happen," Klay said. "We joked about how we grew up together, played ball together and then were mentioned in the same trade rumors together. Small world, small world."
And now, time to let you in on a small secret, one that may not come across on camera, as he begrudgingly fulfills his group media responsibilities:
Laughter apparently happens a lot around Love. Several current and former teammates, even those who didn't consider him a close friend, made early mention of that in interviews with Bleacher Report.
"In the locker room, he was funny, man," said Hornets forward Al Jefferson, a Timberwolves teammate in Love's first two NBA seasons (2008-09 and 2009-10). "He was always one of the guys that jokes and kept everybody laughing. Especially when you're only winning 15, 16 games a year, you got to get some laughs in somewhere."
Bill Bayno was an Timberwolves assistant in Love's fourth and fifth seasons there, which were somewhat more successful. "He's really funny, absolutely hysterical," said Bayno, now a Toronto Raptors assistant. "And very dry. But probably because what you see going on in Cleveland, you probably don't see that side to him."
"He still has the same sense of humor he did when he was 12," Klay Thompson said.
"He'll come in, and without raising his voice, say or do something totally off the cuff," Bayno said, breaking into laughter. "Like, you know, Eastbound and Down? Kenny Powers? Kenny would make his hands like a sword and karate chop each side of his thigh. You know that one? That was one of Kev's big things. His humor is really top-notch."
It hasn't been entirely buried in the back of the bottom shelf this season. Love has embraced the ironic nickname "Menace," one that runs counter to his clean-cut rep, and one that is printed on a black hat that he has worn to shootarounds and practices. When asked in late February, Love said the hats were "something between myself, Champ (James Jones), Killa, which is Mike Miller, and Drew, who is obviously Kyrie (Irving). It's kind of our little thing. It's kind of our clique within the clique." But that's as far as Love would go. When asked to explain "Menace," he replied with a smile: "Nah!"
He's shown a little of his lighter side to the fans inside Quicken Loans Arena, just blocks from the downtown condo in which he resides. All season, the in-game Cavs TV entertainment crew has aired a segment called "Love Notes," which open with piano music and a pop-up heart, and feature him, in his Cavaliers jersey, tapping his pen to pause and ponder while writing a letter on Cavaliers stationary.
Such as "Dear Cleveland, I love the way you glisten through those steamy manhole covers. It's really quite beautiful & delightful this time of year. Love, Love."
Or "Dear Inventor of Twitter: Thanks for coming up with a way for letting me know how I played every game! NO, REALLY...Thank you. Love, Love."
Then the segment ends with the breathless chorus from the Diana Ross-Lionel Richie rendition of "Endless Love."
Love's wry smiles in those segments show a willingness to poke fun at himself and his situation, and stand in stark contrast to the stoic, stiff presence he projects in most of his press availabilities.
He's not entirely averse to emoting in public settings; observers say that in February, while taking part in panel discussion for Cavaliers owner Dan Gilbert's Quicken Loans family of companies in Cleveland, Love stole the show with his candor and composure, addressing the challenges of his first Cavaliers season, the importance Miller and Jones have played in helping him assimilate and how much he wants to win. His new Cavaliers family has seen him thrive in these sorts of environments enough this season to believe that, as in the words of one close observer, "he's really good at it" but that, still, on the whole, "he would rather be left alone."
Especially by people with cameras and recorders.
It wasn't always that way. Reporters who covered him at UCLA still rave about how open and interesting he was. That carried over to his first few years in Minnesota, with Love serving as the smiling face of the franchise in the community. But those who covered the Timberwolves use the word "unravel" to describe what occurred after GM David Kahn chose not to give Love a five-year extension during the 2011-12 season, and especially during the 2012-13 season, which Love started on the sidelines due to a hand injury, and ended on the sidelines (after just 18 games) due to a re-fracture.
That season also included Love, increasingly labeled as a stat-stuffer who couldn't lead his team to the postseason, spilling his soul to Yahoo about his frustration with the organization. Kahn was unpopular among Timberwolves fans, and he had presided over plenty of failure, so it may have seemed like safe, fair game. Yet the general consensus, among those Bleacher Report surveyed, is that his quotes in that story turned many fans and some teammates against him, and that became the turning point, in terms of Love's significant turn inward. That, the reporters say, is when Love essentially packed it in on his public persona and started staring at the floor while spitting out cliches, while hiding the funny, honest guy inside.
That guy hasn't completely come back, at least not for public consumption. That's led to some frustration among those who genuinely like and respect him, those impressed by his intelligence and introspection and wit, that he's not showing anything close to his best self. That he's not telling his story. And that his reluctance to do so—whether due to caution or disdain or both—is allowing too many to get all the wrong ideas about who he is, what he wants and whether he's happy.
Yet others, like Mychal Thompson, don't find any fault with his approach. Thompson, while asserting that "I think he gets a bad rap from people who don't really know him," doesn't believe it is Love's responsibility to fill in the gaps.
"Kevin is a lot like Tim Duncan, intelligent basketball players, where he doesn't suffer fools," Thompson said. "He's like Gregg Popovich. If you can ask him questions, make sure they're intelligent, because he's an intelligent guy. And he doesn't have time for foolish questions. He can read when somebody is trying to make something up that isn't there. That's why he may act a little like he's not as open. Because he's an intelligent guy, and he can tell when people are trying to make something out of nothing."
On his first media day as a member of the Cavaliers, back in late September, Love spoke of his excitement about joining "a different culture," of being "very hungry" to have a chance to contend, of staying grounded while "wanting the pressure of being one of the best teams," and of learning from U.S. national coach Mike Krzyzewski that stars need to bring their egos to help a team succeed.
I asked him, during that podium session, whether he'd spoken to any other players, such as Miami's Chris Bosh, about what it would be like to transition from first option to second or third. Love said he hadn't, but that he'd been "fortunate and unfortunate" to "sit back and watch" many of those players in the playoffs the past six seasons.
"I'd be lying to myself and lying to everybody here if I was telling you I didn't have to sacrifice," Love said then. "I think it's going to be an effort throughout the entire team to do what's best for the Cleveland Cavaliers. We don't know what it is really yet. But I'm going to do whatever it takes for this team to win."
It wouldn't be long before Bosh, in an interview with Bleacher Report, told everyone exactly what it would take, calling the transition "extremely difficult and extremely frustrating" while adding that there was no advice to be offered, because Love would have to experience it for himself.
Bosh was subjected to plenty of slings and arrows during his four seasons as part of Miami's so-called "Big Three," and especially during a turbulent first season, as he adjusted to the increased scrutiny (remember the backlash when he said the players wanted to "chill"?) and as taking a step back sometimes turned into playing passively. But while his numbers were roughly similar in that season (averages of 18.7 points and 8.3 rebounds ) to what Love has produced (averages of 16.4 points and 9.7 rebounds) in this one, Love has endured even more of a firestorm, the ferocity of which—according to associates—has taken him somewhat by surprise, especially in light of all the sacrifices he feels he's made.
Those sacrifices are indisputably significant, as anyone associated with the Cavaliers will openly acknowledge—greater by far than that made by James (who has largely moved back to his preferred perimeter role) and Irving (whose shot attempts dropped from 17.4 last season to 16.5 this season). Love's attempts have plummeted from 18.5 to 12.7, including a plunge in two-point tries from 11.9 to 7.5, plus a free-throw fall from 8.2 to 4.3.
"Now he's pretty much just a three-point shooter, which is pretty much what Bosh turned out to be," said Pistons forward Anthony Tolliver, a Timberwolves reserve in 2010-11 and 2011-12. "And that's kind of what you have to be with LeBron at the helm, and that's fine, obviously, if you win. But at the end of the day, it's definitely a huge adjustment. And whenever Chris Bosh said that, a lot of people were like, 'What do you mean?' There's a huge adjustment. It's a completely different role."
Love's shrinking numbers undoubtedly played a role in him failing to get selected for the All-Star Game for just the second time in the past five seasons, a snub that, according to multiple people Bleacher Report interviewed, did irritate him; the coaches chose Bosh (elevated back to Miami's top option after James' departure) and two Atlanta Hawks, Paul Millsap and Al Horford, as frontcourt reserves behind fan choices James, Carmelo Anthony and Pau Gasol.
This season has seen Love's usage rate plummet from an average of 28.8 his final three seasons in Minnesota to 21.7, lowest since his rookie year. "The offense always ran through him (in Minnesota)," Bayno said. "And now he's pretty much just being asked to space the floor. That, to me, is a really tough adjustment. Obviously, he went there with LeBron to win a championship. I think he had an idea his role would be a little different, I don't think he knew it would be this different. But to me, he's handled it like a pro, and I think he'll come through big in the playoffs."
Bayno said that, in Minnesota, Love might get a dozen post-ups per game, plus elbow iso's and a "ton of what Cleveland is doing, the lifted middle pick-and-rolls, where you got a 5 man diving and he would spread. Because (Nikola) Pekovic was the roller and if Kevin's man tagged off him, (Ricky) Rubio would find Kevin for wide-open threes. It's working for Cleveland. And I think Kev sees that. He wants to win. He heard for a lot of years that he was never on a winning team, he was never on a team that made the playoffs, and he was their marquee player. And he's accepted it, and he'll sacrifice. I think it says it all."
Well, maybe not everything to everybody. And so, at times, Love has attempted to explain what's occurring, though that hasn't necessarily helped his cause. Late in the preseason, Love told Cleveland.com that he could use more touches inside early "to get myself going," a refrain he essentially repeated about a month later when he told ESPN.com he was "just trying to find myself in this offense." Naturally, much controversy ensued on each occasion, with James and coach David Blatt each asked to respond, and James saying—as he once said about a struggling Bosh during the 2013 NBA Finals—that if Love demanded the ball in the post, Love would get it there. Yet, later that night, when asked whether they'd spoken about it, Love said they hadn't.
Even as Cleveland was rallying from a 19-20 start to the East's No. 2 seed, Love experienced some offensive inconsistency. After the Cavaliers' 12-game winning streak ended against Indiana, Love told Cleveland.com that trying to "find my way" was "one of the toughest situations I've had to deal with, but at the end of the day we're winning basketball games," and that "there's no blueprint for what I should be doing, but I'll try my best to figure it out."
From afar, Mychal Thompson has wondered why Love has been forced to do that.
"Cleveland doesn't utilize him correctly," Thompson said. "Kevin is a very versatile player. He can score, knock down threes, he can score from the mid-post, he can score from the low post. He's one of the top five passers in the game. And the Cavaliers don't have enough creativity in their offense to use him correctly. If I was David Blatt and LeBron, I would be using Kevin all over the court. Put him in different areas on the floor to take advantage of his high basketball IQ, and the Cavaliers, from what I'm observing, don't do that enough. ... Just have him stand outside and shoot threes."
The Cavaliers don't agree with that perception, common as it has become. They can counter this way: The way they've used Love, to this point, has clearly worked. They finished the season at 53-29, with the league's third-most efficient offense. They are a plus-7.4 per 100 possessions with Love on the floor, and a minus-0.4 per 100 possessions when he is not. The organization's concern is not that Love is failing to provide value, but that he is failing to fully recognize the value that he is providing—that he believes, incorrectly, that he's not helping enough.
That's actually of greater concern to the Cavaliers than some of the other stuff that's topped many talk shows. Specifically, there's fatigue and frustration with what they deem foolishness—the obsession over every interaction, or omission, between James and Love, or between Love and any of his other teammates.
"Everything's overblown because there aren't enough storylines here, not as many as in Miami," one Cavaliers veteran said.
Well, that's part of it. Plenty was overblown in Miami during James' four years there, though, at least there were enough colorful characters to spread the media storm around.
James has returned to Cleveland as a champion and (in the eyes of many) a hero, who has made right with his hometown. So the media focus has been more on what, or who, might impede his championship chances, with Blatt and Love bearing the brunt of that.
The James/Love drama has played out in response to James' social media missives, one in February in which James appeared to reference an old Love quote about trying to "fit out" more than than "fit in"; and one in March, when Love didn't appear in a "Clique Up" photo with James and six other teammates.
The first of those controversies was more legitimate than the second. James did hint to reporters that that "fit out" post was meant for Love, before backtracking. Love told the media that he was "caught off guard" by it and told associates that he didn't understand why James didn't just come to him directly. But several sources told Bleacher Report that Love took no offense to the "Clique Up" photo; he wasn't even aware of it until the situation had mushroomed into media mayhem. Love, after all, had appeared in Instagram photos with James, and they both had posted one they took with Irving.
"This is like high school," one Love associate scoffed.
An Everest-sized mountain out of a microscopic molehill? Perhaps. Ask people who've been around both, and no one describes them as "close." But you do hear words like "cordial" and "professional" and "respectful" and "workable." Even Love has called it "evolving." The most common response when asked about their relationship is a question back about why it's even relevant.
"You don't have go out and have donuts and candy bars together, but as long as you work together on the court, that's all that matters," Mychal Thompson said. "It's just like any business. Do you go out buddy-buddy with your co-workers everyday? No. You have their life and they have theirs. And you go your separate ways after the work day is over, and sports is no different."
Thompson won titles with Magic Johnson (an extreme extrovert) and Kareem Abdul-Jabbar (a deep thinker) leading the way. "They respected each other, they liked each other, but they didn't go out to dinner every week," he said. "No, no, no. We're all grown-ups here. This is ridiculous. People act like this is an AAU team and you're supposed to go get McDonald's after the game or something. Come on. It's ridiculous. Just some members of the media looking for something to write about, because they're bored."
There are countless examples of teammates who were at least somewhat disconnected off the court (partier Charles Barkley and future politician Kevin Johnson come to mind) but collaborated successfully on it. Paul Pierce just revealed, in an ESPN.com story, that Ray Allen rarely joined him in off-court activities, yet they rolled to the 2008 championship. Consider the case of P.J. Brown, so revered by peers during his 15-year career that many of all different personality types, from J.R. Smith to Luol Deng to David West to Jamaal Magloire, immediately cite him as a mentor. Back when Brown was playing for the Heat, I asked how many real friends he'd made in the NBA. "None, really," he said. "We're like 15 different corporations."
James has many friendly relationships with NBA players on the Cavaliers' roster and others, but he has made no secret that he counts just three NBA players—Carmelo Anthony, Chris Paul and Dwyane Wade—among his close friends, and all are close to his age.
James fills up every room; his long-ago AAU and current teammate, Kendrick Perkins, characterizes his personality as "very dominant, even in his conversation. Even when he speaks, you're like, 'All right, all right, I got you, I got you.'" No one would describe Love that way. He's, in the words of another teammate, "a simple dude," not a wallflower and not necessarily an introvert (since he can crack up the right company), but not someone who feels the need to be the life of the party either. He described himself to Complex magazine as "pretty much a homebody."
In that same Complex interview, back in December, he also said "this is the closest I've been to a team since college." Certainly, there's much less tension than toward the end in Minnesota, especially after he took some his complaints public. His rift with J.J. Barea and Dante Cunningham got the most attention. Love called them out for their bench comportment, and Cunningham was so hot that, as The Associated Press reported (via Fox News), he waited to confront Love in the Target Center loading dock the next day and needed to be talked down. But they weren't the only Timberwolves who tired of answering questions about whether Love was happy and whether he would be leaving.
There are signs that many Cavaliers are grateful for his presence, evidenced when they joke with him during post-practice shooting and when J.R. Smith devotes two paragraphs of a first-person piece in The Cauldron to praising him. "When guys are on the plane and enjoying each other on the plane, he's a part of that, he's involved in that," one Cavaliers insider said. "It's not like he isolates himself from the group when the group is present. He's just got a very small circle, and that's who is going to spend time with off the court."
In the workplace, he doesn't isolate himself from the Cavaliers family either. He is among the team's most appreciated players among team and arena staffers, who speak highly not only of his work in the community but of the decent manner in which he greets and treats them.
"He doesn't pull any of that star (stuff)," one said. "That's how I judge him."
Now, with the playoffs starting, he will be judged by millions of others for what he does on the floor, every minute he plays, in every game.
It's what he wanted.
Will he produce?
"None of us know," James said to reporters Friday, not only of Love, but also of Irving, issuing just his latest in a series of public challenges as the Cavaliers leader.
"He'll handle it fine," Mychal Thompson said. "Kevin, ever since he picked up a basketball, has been the guy, the main guy, at every level. He's used to pressure and having to deliver on the court. And the fact that he's going to be in position to be expected to get to the Finals and help the Cavs win, that doesn't phase him at all."
If it doesn't, and that composure helps Cleveland reach the NBA Finals, it's hard to see how he walks away after this season. When pressed into the always-awkward position of declaring his intentions, he has repeatedly insisted that he's planning to stick around for next season.
What do others predict? That varies, with one exception. Everyone surveyed expects him to stick around if he wins a championship. "I highly doubt he's as unhappy as a lot of people assume," one said. "And he wins more in a week than he won in a month in Minnesota. It would look silly for him to leave."
Love is also widely described as financially aware and savvy. In that case, it wouldn't make much sense for him to opt out and sign a long-term deal somewhere else this summer before the television windfall hits the salary cap, with projections for the 2016-17 season of $89 million.
Still, a couple cautioned not to assume anything, at least not until the Cavaliers complete their playoff run and we know how much Love contributed, how many close fourth quarters he sat or how scorching the spotlight got. He wouldn't be the first in NBA history—not after Glen Rice, James Harden, Bosh and many others—to find himself scapegoated whenever his high-profile team struggles. Nor would it be surprising if he tries to defend himself, as Bosh sometimes did, and then gets skewered even more.
Even if he does, and even if he pays a public price, there's still confidence among the Cavaliers that winning will take precedence, and that he'll sacrifice what's required, on both ends, to win at that this time of year. There's even hope that eventually he'll understand how much he means, and how the mere threat of his long-range shooting opens up the floor for everyone else. Maybe so, maybe not. Still, that's a better bet, for sure, than expecting him to open up to some stranger about the experience. As the playoffs open up for him, after six empty seasons, his play will say everything for him.
Statistics via Basketball-Reference.com unless otherwise noted.
Ethan Skolnick covers the NBA for Bleacher Report and is a co-host of NBA Sunday Tip, 9-11 a.m. ET on SiriusXM Bleacher Report Radio. Follow him on Twitter, @EthanJSkolnick.