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Musings on Kevin Love as he officially leaves UCLA

Bumped. Wanted to make sure more folks got to read this excellent take that went up over the long weekend. GO BRUINS. -N

Really quick update here: I just read more closely, and realized that there was a mistake in my initial post.  Nestor rightfully made this a small point, because it was inevitable, and I had missed it.  Sorry, N.

It's not mentioned in his daily Bruin Walk post, so I have to assume Nestor is already writing a dedicated post about today's news reported in the Daily News that Kevin Love is hiring an agent and it is therefore about to become official that he is leaving.

Don't get me wrong, I like Kevin Love a lot, but I can't really bring myself to be all that sad about this.

When the season ended and it just came down to the waiting game until he announced that he would put his name in the draft, my biggest concern was that the basketball team did not have a proven center next year.  Unless Drew Gordon proved to be a major phenom - and in the few minutes of his high school basketball career I had seen, consisting of him confronting an opposing player after a foul and the two receiving off-setting technical fouls, I wasn't optimistic about that - there was going to be a big void left in the middle, and it was going to require that UCLA play a significantly different type of game next year.  (I had faith that Ben Howland would adjust and that we would still be competitive, but the streak of Final Four caliber teams seemed to be in danger.)

The fact that the article I linked above isn't just about Kevin Love, but is a shared article about the fact that our next center has magically appeared out of thin air and we appear to have found an adequate replacement in J'Mison Morgan, means that I can say that I'm not worried about the center position anymore, and I've realized that this means that I can say good bye to Kevin Love without really feeling like UCLA is going to miss him.

The thing is, UCLA made the Final Four before Kevin Love was here, and we have as good a chance to make it again next year without him as any other team in the country, from what I can tell.  Really, then, there is no Kevin Love legacy to speak of.  He was an affable big man who came down from Oregon, spent a year waiting out his NBA-imposed delay for eligibility, spent some time talking to John Wooden and hanging out in Los Angeles, and now he's gone.  Yes, there are some happy memories of things he did in games, and it was an impressive year, but UCLA is no better or worse off now than it was before he announced that he would attend, as far as I can tell.

I have to say, I do have a couple of small bones of contention I could pick up, which occurred to me in the wake of the comments made by Kevin's dad on a sports radio show in the past week.  Thinking about "promises" that Ben Howland may or may not have made to a kid who ended up being an All-American and winning the Pac-10 POY award, I remember - even if I can't seem to be able to word a search query that will help me find the link for it - a mini-controversy earlier in the season when Howland seemed to be calling out Kevin Love for being out of shape.  Kevin seemed to be a little upset at the insinuation at the time.  Now, with the draft approaching, I have seen Kevin Love saying  he has dropped several pounds and is in the shape he needs to be in order to do some things that are going to surprise the NBA scouts when he's going through draft try-outs.  If his dad is going to say that Kevin Love wasn't able to showcase the talents he had, I think it's only fair to put it on the record that Kevin Love did not put himself in the position until it was too late for Howland to showcase some of those particular talents.  Kevin Love had a year to goof off and play some college basketball, it appears, and waited until that year was over to get serious about getting ready for the next level.  Given how phenomenal some of the things he did in Westwood were, I'm left with a regret that we didn't get to see Kevin Love's best effort, and wish that somehow in challenging Kevin to get into better shape, as he tried to do, Howland had been able to speed that process.

Before it seems like I'm complaining too much, I should say that I've defended Kevin Love's right to go to the NBA in several conversations with friends.  Kevin Love does not owe us anything because he put on the UCLA jersey and played for our team.  I had fun watching him play, and wish him all the best.

And perhaps the best thing in all of this is that there are other UCLA players who set an example that make them easier to love as UCLA fans than Kevin Love is.  Perhaps in another sport, it would be easy to say that Kevin Love had to go pro now, because the owners are trying to limit rookie salaries and it would  be a matter of losing millions of dollars if he had stayed in college for another year and worked to bring that championship he said that he wanted to win with UCLA.

So I choose to save my love for a player like Darren Collison, who in this interview may have become my favorite player in the Ben Howland era.  This is a guy who never complained in his freshman year when he felt that he was not getting the playing time he deserved behind Jordan Farmar, led the team after Farmar left, and then decided to stay for his senior year despite the fact that he was hearing from scouts that he was a likely first-round draft pick.  I loved listening to him talk about how much he loves hanging out with UCLA students and being in college basketball.

I choose to love Lorenzo Mata-Real, who took us to two Final Fours before Kevin Love arrived, and - who knows? - may have taken us to a third without the much-hyped one-and-done player who took his starting spot in Mata-Real's senior year.  The next complaint I hear from Mata-Real will be the first.

The first post I ever put on BruinsNation was an attempt to vent my frustration when Jordan Farmar was leaving for the NBA, as it reminded me of the pain I had felt when Baron Davis had left after his second year.  I loved Jordan Farmar and Arron Afflalo because they had been the Founding Fathers of the new era in UCLA basketball, and even if they were leaving early, they had bought into a new age in the aftermath of Steve Lavin.

I love Ben Howland for bringing in that new age and several other players who will continue to wear UCLA jerseys and pursue national championships.

Kevin Love?  Seems like a nice enough guy.  Plugged into a new UCLA legacy that existed before he got here.  Hope he does well at the next level.  Nice of him to stop by.  I like him a lot.

This is a FanPost and does not necessarily reflect the views of BruinsNation's (BN) editors. It does reflect the views of this particular fan though, which is as important as the views of BN's editors.

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