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A Love story Former NBA great turns fears into success
Posted: Friday March 24, 2000 01:29 PM
Bob Love sat in front of his locker at the Forum in Los Angeles that morning in 1971, nearly in tears. He was an all-star, sharing space with West and Chamberlain, Reed and Bradley, the best in the NBA. As the leading scorer for the Chicago Bulls, he deserved every moment of his fame. But when we gathered before him after that final practice, looking for quotes, he simply shook his head and stared at the floor. It wasn't that the man known around the NBA as Butterbean wouldn't talk, he couldn't. His stuttering so severe that it sometimes took him minutes just to eject one word. What a shame it was, for he was not only a man of great talent and excitement but very thoughtful and intelligent, as well. He could have owned Chicago, but for a voice. In the years after his NBA career, he moved from one meaningless job to another, finally winding up in Seattle, working at a Nordstrom's department store, bussing tables and washing dishes in the cafeteria. "Oh, it was so embarrassing," Love told The Sporting Life years ago. "People would come in and recognize me and whisper stuff about me being an all-star, now lookit him. It was awful."
But the Nordstroms management knew he didn't belong there, too, and sent him in search of speech therapy. If he could somehow find a voice, he could have a better job. After moving from therapist to therapist, desperate for help, Love finally found a woman who took him back to his earliest days and taught him language from its infancy. Part of the therapy was speaking in front of groups--a horrible nightmare not that long before. One night, a Chicago Bulls executive happened to be in the crowd where Love was speaking, approached him about returning to work in the team's front office. It is one of life's greatest stories, made so much better by the man's proud soul. He has worked for the Bulls as director of community relations, making upwards of 300 speeches a year. Imagine that. A man whose voice was his jump shot, who lost untold thousands of dollars in endorsements because he had no say, suddenly is telling his story to anyone who will listen. There is a book due shortly and he says a movie is even in the works. He still gets hung up on a word, still gropes awkwardly for a thought, but there is a common eloquence now that makes all of that very acceptable, even charming. It's just too bad none of us ever were able to see that thirty years ago.
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