Heat veteran Kevin Love’s work to destigmatize mental health conversation in NBA continues

It has been six years since Miami Heat forward Kevin Love went public with his own challenges regarding mental health.

Chicago Bulls forward DeMar DeRozan began the conversation with a tweet about depression in 2018, and Love added to it a few weeks later with a first-person essay about his anxiety. Together, DeRozan and Love have served as the catalysts toward destigmatizing mental health issues in the NBA.

On Tuesday, Love continued his work in the mental health space by joining the Heat to unveil the second Heat Mindfulness Sanctuary at Miami Jackson High. According to a press release, “the sanctuary offers students and teachers a serene retreat from the daily stressors with nature-inspired elements like wall graphics, artificial grass turf, iPads, aromatherapy diffusers, and more.”

“Just seeing the investment for Miami Jackson to be able to do that as the second school to do that,” Love said. “It just goes to show you that there’s a lot of intention and the school system really cares about that to get the best out of kids. It’s such a limiting factor of potential, when mentally you’re not in the right place.”

Love’s work has also continued in the locker rooms he has been a part of and with players around the league who reach out to him for guidance. Love said he had “a lot of conversations” with former Cleveland Cavaliers teammate Ricky Rubio before Rubio announced his retirement in January to address mental health issues that he’s still working on.

“Just within an arm’s distance and very close, our locker room in Cleveland and as well as in here [in Miami], guys feel more and more comfortable to not only be themselves but be like, ‘Hey, I’m struggling with something,’” Love, 35, said. “I think just being at the forefront of it, DeMar and myself included, it’s not a burden by any means. But certainly the consistency of people coming to us and asking for resources and where to go and for help has continued to be on the uptick.

“It’s good that people actually have the willingness to do that to ask for that help. I think it’s only the beginning, especially in the NBA and in sports, for the acceptance of mental health and mental well-being being a big part of what we do both physically, emotionally, mentally, in your soul, whatever it may be. Being able to take care of that so you can take care of everything else.”

All the while, Love continues to work on himself and his own mental health. It’s an ongoing battle that he faces every day and one that he realized he needed to confront when he had a panic attack in the third quarter of a Nov. 5, 2017, game against the Atlanta Hawks as a member of the Cavaliers.

“I don’t know what the future holds as far as being able to eradicate something or get rid of it,” Love said. “It’s an ongoing evolution and ongoing work for me, but it’s been changing my relationship with my anxiety and my dark spells.

“But I do feel like just being open and willing to pay it forward and help that next person like a Ricky and how DeMar did for me. I think that sense of purpose and that sense that everybody wants to be on the winning side of history, we all want to be able to help somebody even if in some cases it means sacrifice. I think it brings me a lot of joy because I am just at my core a giver, in general.”

The birth of Love’s first child this past June during last season’s NBA Finals has also given him a fresh perspective on life. His daughter has helped him just like Love has helped so many others.

“It’s a sense of purpose outside of just coming into work or trying to bring a different style of leadership here, as well as in the mental health space,” Love said. “But my daughter certainly has made me really consider and be grateful for a lot of different things in life, including the beauty and struggle both on and off the floor.”

Love is in his first full season with the Heat after joining the organization during the mid-February All-Star break last season following a buyout agreement with the Cavaliers. He has since established himself as an important part of the Heat’s rotation as the backup center, averaging nine points, 6.2 rebounds and 2.2 assists per game while producing positive minutes in his bench role this season.

But Love won’t play in Friday night’s matchup against the Pistons in Detroit to kick off the Heat’s four-game trip. Love will miss his eighth straight game with a right heel bruise and did not travel to Detroit for the start of the trip.

Love, who is in his 16th NBA season, is a five-time All-Star and was one of the leading men on the Cavaliers team that won a championship in 2016. But he has found a new role and a new home with the Heat, and more importantly he’s also found happiness alongside his wife, Kate Bock, and their daughter in Miami.

“They accepted me from the beginning. So I think that allowed me to settle in,” Love said of his transition to the Heat last season. “I think off the floor was harder to get settled in initially because I was living out of a hotel for the first time ever during a season. Basically until the offseason, we were in a really short-term high rise, which never felt like home. But now we’re finally settled in here. We have a place that we feel like we can grow into and we’ve made Miami a home.”