LAKE OSWEGO, ORE. — According to just about every organization that gave out an award for the nation's best high school basketball player, Kevin Love was the guy.
So, as he has just arrived in Los Angeles, ready to start what is expected to be a short but spectacular college career, Love is truly expected to be a big man on the UCLA campus.
He certainly looks the part -- 6 feet 10, 250 pounds, everything square.
Love looks as if he might be immobile or plodding on the court, but he isn't. His size-18 feet land lightly, barely making a sound. He makes court-length passes with a flick of the wrist, so fast and easily that some say he might be a top major league baseball prospect as a pitcher.
"That's true," says Mark Shoff, Love's high school basketball coach. "First time I saw Kevin as an athlete it was throwing a baseball. Kid's got a great arm."
But Love is also very definitely a polished basketball player, with a nuanced feel for the game that some players a decade older haven't mastered. He rarely finds himself in bad position, and what might look like a blind pass -- a little showing off -- is really not.
Stan Love, Kevin's 6-8 father, played at Oregon and then for the Baltimore Bullets and the Lakers in a four-year NBA career, so he usually gets credit for his son's all-around game.
But he doesn't take it. Stan says Kevin seems to have been born with a feel for when and where to throw the basketball.
That said, though, there was always a deep appreciation around the Love household for big men who could play. Kevin's middle name -- Wesley -- is a tribute to one of them. Wes Unseld was a teammate of Stan's on the Bullets.
Many basketball professionals, UCLA Coach Ben Howland included, say Love is the best passing big man since Unseld.
That means something to Kevin, because he appreciates basketball history. One of his favorite stories is about his dad once dunking on Wilt Chamberlain.
"Yeah," Stan says, "It's true. But here's the rest of the story: The next four times up the court Wilt was pointing at me and dunked in my face. Four times in a row."
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Visit the 1,800-seat gym set in emerald green perfection in this leafy Portland suburb and just imagine the bursting energy the Love-led Lake Oswego team must have generated during its past magical season.
Kevin must have been treated like a rock star, right?
