When I think Kevin Love three things immediately come to my mind: rebounding machine, Beach Boys relative, and a guy who showers in other people’s houses during Old Spice commercials. None of those things enter into my thought process in any particular order, but they do serve as the thumbnails I use to help shape any and all K-Love discussions initially. Or at least maybe they did.
In catching up on Love’s first in a series of a regular off-season blog entries over at Grantland.com, I feel like there will be more that eventually comes to mind when I hear his name mentioned moving forward. He came off as a pretty interesting guy to pay attention too, if you hadn’t read his entry already, and that’s why I excerpted a whole bunch of what he said below – on the chance you didn’t.
There’s about three times as much of this over at Grantland, but this is a little bit of what I liked most from the guy. First talking about his workout regimen throughout this off-season, and then moving on from there.
Via Grantland.com:
I worked slowly and built up my stamina and strength through yoga, strength training, and cardiovascular conditioning … I feel better than I ever have. For the first time since my freshman year in high school (2003-04) I weigh under 240 pounds, and my strength has consistently gone up.
First, I took my time building back up, and treated the latter part of April and the whole month of May as a recovery period from the 10 straight months of basketball. Not that I am the only one who plays this much throughout the course of a year; I know that many players do this, and some even take their teams deep into the postseason year in and year out. This year, for example, some of the players from the World Championships moved deep into the playoffs and their teams saw immense success. While I pay those individuals much respect, knowing the NBA could head into a long and drawn out offseason gave me peace of mind that I could rest my body and mind to prepare for the next step in my career.
To put our schedules into perspective, NBA players only work out a few hours a day. Therefore, this summer I had a lot of “spare time” and I used this opportunity to give myself the chance to grow and try new things. I felt the need to challenge myself in more than with just basketball, and I did so in a variety of ways. Beyond catching up on some books I wanted to read (Gladwell is at the top of my list as of late), I took a class at UCLA on American popular culture, I played in the Jose Cuervo Pro Beach Volleyball Series in Manhattan Beach, I murdered Chris Bosh at the Call of Duty video-game release, I got certified as an open-water diver through PADI … and the list goes on.
First of all, what a monster that dude had to be as a 10th grader, even as a 9th grader actually. Had I happened to find myself in K-Love’s graduating class as a 5’3″ kid fresh out of 8th grade I’d have been terrified of him. Nevertheless though, it’s good for both him and the T-Wolves that he’s staying in this kind of shape. I really think next year can be huge for Love, whenever it happens, and I don’t see how extra pounds help his game in any way either. Neither does he apparently.
He also comes across as a pretty diverse individual as well. Took a class at UCLA for fun, talking about reading Gladwell, mixing in some Jose Cuervo Beach Volleyball, putting Chris Bosh on blast for beating him in Call of Duty, I can’t help but like this guy the more I hear from him. I may even forget he’s related to the Beach Boys next time I hear somebody mention his name if he keeps this pace up.
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Photo: DimeMagazine
