During the Tokyo Olympics last year, Kevin Love chose to withdraw from the team shortly before the start of the competition. According to Love, he wasn’t in a good place that summer and felt that leaving Team USA to get his mind and body right was the best thing to do for both himself and Team USA.
At the time, however, the team’s managing director, Jerry Colangelo, painted a very different picture of the situation and called out Love for being out of shape:
“I didn’t think Kevin Love was going to play. I wasn’t even sure he had much left to play. He reached out to us and said he was in shape and said he felt he owed us. And on the basis of that, we’re looking at someone with international experience who at one time was a heck of a rebounder and could still shoot the ball. You know, being like a 12th man on a roster. Well, it didn’t work out. He wasn’t in shape. And he was way behind as it turned out. So you move on. Call it a mistake. Call it giving someone an opportunity. Someone who had equity with us.”
Those were harsh words from Colangelo and went viral at the time. It wouldn’t be until a year later when the Cavs star would finally respond. On Friday evening, Love looked back at those comments and revealed his true feelings on what went down that summer:
“People that I’ve had relationships with throughout USA basketball for that long, threw me under the bus. And I didn’t like that,” Love said. “I felt that I did the right thing by coming to the landing spot and landing point that I eventually got to. I just thought it was very unfair and coming from this elite fraternity that we have in our 450 players. You would think, like, you take care of each other.”
“People that I’ve had relationships with throughout USA basketball for that long, threw me under the bus.” ⁰⁰@kevinlove reflects on Jerry Colangelo and withdrawing from Team USA
Watch live here: https://t.co/03ruOImHHY pic.twitter.com/d5rPt0wtXI
— Bleacher Report (@BleacherReport) May 13, 2022
Joining Team USA is supposed to be considered a huge honor for NBA players. It gives them a chance to play for their country and compete against, literally, the best basketball players around the globe.
But how can these top-level NBA guys trust the guys in charge if they are so quick to throw established veterans like Kevin Love under the bus? It’s a dangerous place to be, and one has to hope they handle things like that better in the future. As for Love, he just had a resurgence in Cleveland, but it remains to be seen if he’ll ever suit up for Team USA again.
