Kevin Love discloses his battle with panic attacks, calls them 'mental health' issue

CLEVELAND, Ohio -- Kevin Love disclosed his battles with panic attacks, which knocked him out of a Cavaliers game this season, in a self-penned essay for the Players' Tribune on Tuesday.

Love, 29, a five-time NBA All-Star, said in the essay that he suffered his first panic attack on Nov. 5, early in the third quarter of a loss to the Atlanta Hawks.

The episode chased him from the game (he only scored two points in the first half) and landed him at the Cleveland Clinic. Love called the panic attacks a "mental health" issue and said there was a stigma preventing professional athletes from discussing and embracing a problem that affects them as commonly as it does the general population.

"For 29 years, I thought about mental health as someone else's problem," Love wrote. "Sure, I knew on some level that some people benefited from asking for help or opening up. I just never thought it was for me. To me, it was form of weakness that could derail my success in sports or make me seem weird or different.

"Then came the panic attack."

Though Love does not mention it in his essay, which is titled "Everyone is going through something," Love told Cavs teammates the reason he left The Q before the end of a loss to Oklahoma City Thunder in January was because of this same issue.

Love made the disclosure during the infamous Jan. 22 team meeting in which Dwyane Wade and Isaiah Thomas challenged him (and the organization) as to why Love not only left before the end of the game, but missed practice the next day.

Love hasn't played since Jan. 30 because of a broken bone in his left hand. He's averaging 17.9 points and 9.4 rebounds this season, and was an All-Star.

"I want to make it clear that I don't have things figured out about all of this," Love said in the essay. "I'm just starting to do the hard work of getting to know myself. For 29 years, I avoided that. Now, I'm trying to be truthful with myself. I'm trying to be good to the people in my life. I'm trying to face the uncomfortable stuff in life while also enjoying, and being grateful for, the good stuff. I'm trying to embrace it all, the good, bad and ugly."

Love said he was sharing his own condition in part because of recent comments made by Toronto All-Star DeMar DeRozan, who disclosed he dealt with occasional bouts of depression.

"Creating a better environment for talking about mental health ... that's where we need to get to," Love said, explaining his decision to share his story.

After the Nov. 5 incident, Love said, the Cavs connected him with a therapist.

"I distinctly remember being more relieved than anything that nobody had found out why I had left the game against Atlanta," he said. "A few people in the organization knew, sure, but most people didn't and no one had written about it."

By the All-Star break, where the league's brightest stars (and many, many players and NBA people not in the actual All-Star Game) gathered in Los Angeles, whispers of Love's battle with panic attacks made the rounds.

Love was asked during his session with reporters on All-Star Saturday if he used Cavs-provided mental-health services and he said that he had.

"I live by a great quote and it's 'only by admitting who we are can we get what we want,'" Love said in Los Angeles. "In order to get rid of that stigma, it's not a thing that should be taboo or not talked about. We should allow it to surface and I think that's part of when you watch or I think about my dad or coming from that generation. They don't talk about anything. You hold it in.

"Some of the people who have gone to war or been through certain things," Love continued. "It's tough because there's traumatic incidents. You have PTSD for incidents that cause so much stress or you go through say a horrific injury and have to come back from that. There's a lot there.

"You have to let some of that stuff bleed out in order to fully recover from it."

Let's block ads! (Why?)