Kevin Love spent one year at UCLA before making the jump to the NBA. He had many great moments during his short time in Los Angeles, but his best moment at the school came after he went pro.
As Love told Sports Illustrated, he went out with some friends one night before his rookie campaign with the Minnesota Timberwolves. One of his friends, ex-water polo player Tyler Kandel, tried to kick something, slipped, and hit the ground hard. Both Love and a third friend, former Bruins basketball player Josh Shipp, started laughing before they noticed that Kandel started bleeding out of his left wrist – Kandel was carrying a 4o-ounce bottle of malt liquor and it shattered during his fall.
Kandel’s artery was sliced open and he was bleeding profusely. That’s when Love stepped in.
Kandel heard Love scream at Shipp to call the police. “You aren’t going to die tonight,” Love said. Kandel was wearing a black T-shirt, and Love tore it from his chest. Love’s mother, Karen, worked as a nurse at Legacy Emanuel Medical Center in Portland when he was growing up. He had never made a tourniquet, but he had seen it done before. Kandel yowled as Love tied the shirt into a knot around his wrist.
As Kandel recalled, one of his EMTs told him that Love saved his life, because if he kept bleeding like this for a few more minutes, he would have died. Currently, Kandel is a photographer who still has the ability to use his left hand despite the fact that he needed a 12-hour operation and a year of physical therapy.
This story is incredible, as Love’s quick thinking managed to save another person from dying. No matter what he does in basketball – winning championships, potentially making the Hall of Fame, whatever – nothing will be as important as his actions on that night in 2008.
A different kind of incredible is Love’s description of the end of Game 7 of the 2016 NBA Finals. Love famously locked down Stephen Curry when the Cavaliers were up by three with about 45 seconds remaining in the game, a moment that he compared to a Will Ferrell scene in Old School.
The unanimous MVP started left, dribbled behind his back, and probed right. He threw a crossover and a step-back, the moves that singed defenders all season. “It was like in Old School when Will Ferrell is on the debate team,” Love laughs. “‘What happened? I blacked out!’ ”
…
During a film session after Game 6, Lue told Love he was giving Curry and Klay Thompson too much space. “You think you’re there, but it’s not the same against these guys,” Lue said. “You’re not there. You have to get here.” He demonstrated with something very close to a chest bump. As Curry fired, Love followed his eyes. “So many times, he looks at the person he’s shooting over,” Love says. “I was like, ‘Is he going to look at me?’ ” He didn’t look.
So over the course of eight years, Love saved a person’s life and shut down the greatest shooter of all-time to win Cleveland a championship because he temporarily blacked out. Not bad.
(Via Sports Illustrated)
