Kevin Love, during his first eight seasons as a pro, has made a name for himself as being one of the league’s nicest and most professional individuals. Along with being one of the best Basketball players at his position, it’s easy to see why LeBron James values him as much as he does.
Despite the plethora of criticism and negative press he’s received since being traded to the Cavaliers, Love has pushed through it all, finally accomplishing a life-long goal of winning an NBA championship with the Cavs this past June. He’s a talented Basketball player: That much is known.
One off-the-court story that hadn’t been known, up until a few days ago, is the time that Love saved the life of his good friend Tyler Kandel back in 2008.
Lee Jenkins of Sports Illustrated detailed the story in a phenomenal larger piece on Love this past week:
In September 2008, Kandel had just graduated from UCLA, where he played water polo. Love, a Bruins basketball star, was preparing for his first training camp in Minnesota. On one of their last nights in Westwood, they ate dinner at a sushi restaurant with UCLA small forward Josh Shipp, then walked down Levering Avenue to a party in an apartment west of campus.
Halfway down the hill, they paused. Kandel held a 40-ounce bottle of Olde English malt liquor in his left hand. Shipp was carrying his own bottle as well. Kandel, messing with his buddy, wound up to kick Shipp’s bottle. It was as if he slipped on a banana peel. “I flew up in the air,” Kandel recalls, “and my left leg went under me.”
Love and Shipp cracked up as Kandel landed on his back. They did not realize that Kandel’s bottle had shattered in the fall and glass had sliced his left wrist.
Kandel reflexively covered the cut with his right hand. As he released it, to check the wound, blood spewed onto the street. “I could see inside my hand, inside my wrist,” Kandel says. “The artery was split wide open.”The laughter stopped. 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. “That was the most painful part,” Kandel remembers.
As the ambulance rushed Kandel to UCLA Medical Center, EMTs asked him who tied the tourniquet. Kandel looked down at his green Tretorn hightops, the white toe caps stained red, and mumbled something about a friend. “Whoever it was,” one EMT said, “just saved your life.” A few more minutes, they estimated, and Kandel would have bled to death.
The quick thinking of Kevin Love helped save his buddy’s life back in 2008, the year he would ultimately be drafted into the NBA.
In the present day, Love and the Cavaliers now focus their attention on the tough task of traveling to the NBA finals for a third straight season. One must think Tyler Kandel will be rooting them on every step of the way.
