Kevin Love Reflects on Meeting, Playing With Russell Westbrook at UCLA
It didn't take long for Kevin Love to realize he was playing with a future star in Westwood.
Love was the featured guest on the latest episode of Bleacher Report's "Full Bodied" hosted by Channing Frye, and the two talked about their shared experience leading the Cleveland Cavaliers to the 2016 NBA Championship and several other main topics. Love's history with fellow UCLA men's basketball alumnus Russell Westbrook came up as well, as the two helped lead the Bruins to the Final Four back in 2008.
Westbrook arrived at UCLA a year before the highly-touted Love, and the local recruit only ended up playing 9.0 minutes per game in the 2006-2007 season. In the 2007 Elite Eight, Love said he remembers watching Westbrook stand out in his five minutes against Kansas, putting up four points, a rebound, an assist and a steal on perfect shooting from the field.
"I remember watching him, I think they played Kansas and he had a really great game," Love said. "But really just a defensive player and then just make some plays happen on offense – he wasn't a primary focus on either side of the ball."
Love enrolled at UCLA a few months after that March Madness run, and he immediately started playing offseason pickup games with his new teammates and some special guests.
The time-honored tradition of NBA players matching up with Bruins in the summers was running at full capacity back in 2007, as Love said Los Angeles Lakers guard Kobe Bryant and new Boston Celtics teammates Kevin Garnett and Paul Pierce would often stop by the men's gym.
But even with so many future Hall of Famers in their prime out on the court with them, Love said he noticed Westbrook take it up a notch.
"I can remember Russ just taking it off the top of the glass, coming down, surveying the court, kind of cross-grained into the lane, kind of spun back, went up with his left hand and was, like, top of the square and finished," Love said. "And I thought, 'Wow, he's gonna be special.'"
By the time the regular season started, Westbrook was a starter often playing 30-plus minutes a night. Darren Collison, the Bruins' incumbent starting point guard, was still recovering from a knee injury and missed the first six games of the year.
According to Love, the time Collison missed helped not only Westbrook's development, but also set up the whole supporting cast of Josh Shipp, Luc Richard Mbah a Moute and Lorenzo Mata-Real for a third-straight trip to the Final Four.
"And the best thing, I think, that happened to him and maybe even our team was that, unfortunately, Darren Collison had an MCL sprain in his knee – Russell had to play point guard," Love said. "So he had to handle the ball, he had to guide the team, he had to run the team. Once he moved to that shooting guard position and I was able to outlet to both those guys, those guys were all able to play off each other."
Love went on to average 17.5 points and 10.6 rebounds per game during that 2007-2008 campaign while earning consensus All-American honors in the process. By his side, Westbrook averaged 12.7 points, 4.3 assists, 3.9 rebounds and 1.6 steals per game en route to an All-Pac-10 spot and the Pac-10 Defensive Player of the Year award.
UCLA went 35-4 in the one season Love and Westbrook played together, losing in the Final Four to Memphis. In the 2008 NBA Draft, Westbrook went No. 4 to the Oklahoma City Thunder and Love went No. 5 overall to the Minnesota Timberwolves and
While the pair has never teamed up in the pros, the two former Bruins were teammates on Team USA in 2010 and 2012, earning gold medals at the World Championships and the Olympics side by side once more.
Love and Westbrook have combined for 14 All-Star appearances since leaving Westwood.
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