If you prowled around this site during the lockout summer (or rather, fall), you may have seen a post about former Baltimore Bullet Stan Love, father of Kevin Love of the Minnesota Timberwolves. When he was in town on Sunday, Kevin took some time before the game to chat with me about his dad. Here goes…

What has your father told you about the NBA?

“My dad has dropped a lot of knowledge on me throughout the years. He placed a ball in my hands from an early age, so basketball has always been in my blood — obviously with having the last name ‘Love’ and obviously being named after Wes Unseld, different spelling [Kevin’s middle name is Wesley, Unseld spelled his first name, Westley], but going back to his heyday. It’s pretty special to be trying to follow in his footsteps and kind of do what my dad did, but also a little bit of what [Unseld] did as well.”

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September 22, 1971. Louisville, Kentucky. Freedom Hall.

Just over 40 years ago the Baltimore Bullets made the 600-mile trip west from Northern Virginia, where they had battled the N.B.A.’s New York Knickerbockers in their preseason opener the night before, to square off against the Kentucky Colonels of the American Basketball Association in the biggest game few today have ever heard about. The contest would be the second act in an Inter-League Exhibition Game (ILEG) series, a sporting event invented by the owners who were looking for something to make “airing out the big arenas, sweeping the floor and printing up tickets worthwhile,” amid rumors of a merger between the two roundball associations. Though early on, these exhibitions were not well publicized, they weren’t without meaning.

The 1971 ILEG series was headlined by two N.B.A. titans, the Milwaukee Bucks and the Baltimore Bullets, both gearing up for another shot at an N.B.A. championship. They were scheduled to play five A.B.A. squads in five A.B.A. cities; the games were held in A.B.A. cities like Louisville and Winston-Salem for the simple reason that the N.B.A. didn’t want to legitimize the upstart league.

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Sit back folks. I know it’s hard to digest losing the opportunity to watch John Wall, Jan Vesely, usually JaVale McGee, Trevor Booker, Jordan Crawford, Nick Young, Chris Singleton, and others play basketball for the Washington Wizards. It’s the pits. On the other hand, I shrug my shoulders. What else are those who will inevitably return to the game when they start playing again supposed to do? We get ready for the long haul.

But don’t worry folks, this site will carry on just fine. Friends have asked me what I’m going to do during the NBA Lockout. One, I’m going to miss taking pictures at games. There’s nothing like being right there, and photography from the baseline has, at least for me, allowed for new ways to express basketball from different visual perspectives. I’ll also miss the ability to interview players about things that don’t necessarily pertain to basketball or the game at hand — Christmas presents, nicknames, clothing/shoes, and those who never made it being some of the topics.

And that’s what this Wizards-related website often is all about… an outlet for creativity, no matter the pixel medium. So while there will be no games for a long time, it seems, basketball doesn’t go away. There’s history, there’s some old games to break down, there’s forgotten about projects that deserve attention. Of course, all of this as time with regular life allows. But to exist, we certainly don’t need NBA basketball. They’ll be back, one day.

Dave Stallworth

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If you follow @Truth_About_It on Twitter, you’ll often see a lot of random stuff, but lately you might have also noticed a personally renwed interest in old NBA collector’s cards, some of which I’ve shared with the hash-tag #oldNBAcards. Of course, “old” is relative — most of what I’ve shared comes from the 1990s. However, this past weekend I came across some even older cards (as in, from the early 70s, just under a decade before I was born), specifically pertaining to the Baltimore Bullets.  And this Friday, I’m here to share with you Stan Love… perhaps the first bro/dude in team history. Let’s bask in the glow of a Love card from 1972, then a bullet point run-down on the former Bullet, and finally, another Love card from 1973. Enjoy and Happy Friday.

• Stan Love, from Los Angeles, California, was drafted by the Baltimore Bullets with the 9th overall pick out of the University of Oregon in 1971 — Love was also drafted by the Dallas Chaparrals of the ABA, but opted for the NBA. 
• Love said he found out about being drafted on the radio while driving on a California interstate, said he had to pull over on the side of the road and look at a map to see where Baltimore was.
• Love’s older brother, Mike, was a founder of the band, The Beach Boys; other group members, Dennis Wilson and Brian Wilson, were cousins of the Loves.
• Love had a decorated college career playing for the Ducks (he was inducted into Oregon’s Hall of Fame in 1994), but his time in the pros was relatively disappointing.
• He played two seasons with Baltimore, was traded to the Los Angeles Lakers for Truck Robinson in the summer of 1973, played a season and a half in L.A., at which point he was waived and later picked up by the San Antonio Spurs (then of the ABA) for 12 games before retiring from basketball in 1975.
• Over four pro seasons, Love appeared in 239 games, averaged 14.7 minutes, 6.6 points on .440 field-goal shooting, and 3.9 rebounds.
• He partied with Phil Jackson — from the 2001 book More Than A Game, co-written by Jackson and Charley Rosen, this part penned by Rosen: “I first met PJ at a postgame party in the spring of 1973 in his loft on West Nineteenth Street, brought there by a mutual friend, Stan Love, a six-foot-nine well-credentialed hippie and part-time power-less forward for the Baltimore Bullets.”
• Other terms across the Internet used to describe Stan Love include: flaky, kooky, goofy, feisty, wacky, California surfer dude, etc.
• Two stories on Love are conveyed in a 2009 piece on BaltimoreStyle.com: 1) “At a game in Milwaukee, he impersonated Tarzan by hanging on the rim after a dunk long enough for the Bucks to score on the other end. All he drew for his effort was a technical,” and 2) “Another time in Baltimore, he was knocked to the floor. [Gene] Shue sent in a replacement. Instead of rising and walking back to the bench, Love “rowed” himself across the floor like an Olympic skuller.”
• Love thought so much of teammate Wes Unseld’s ability, especially his rebounding and outlet passing prowess, that he made the middle name of his son, Kevin, “Wesley” — of course, Unseld’s first name is really spelled “Westley,” but the intent was there.
• Kevin Love, another of course, is that guy in the NBA you often hear so much about — like when he was a 2011 All-Star, the 2011 NBA’s Most Improved Player, and that 30 point/30 rebound game he had last November.
• In March 2008, after seeing Kevin Love play for U.C.L.A., Unseld had this to say: “Passing skill is something you learn. It’s not something you’re born with. Kevin’s had a good teacher in his dad. Stan was a very good player, but he was just a space cadet. Stan was completely different from me, but I loved throwing passes to him so he could score. If Stan scored you could keep him out of trouble.”
• When Love retired from the NBA in ’75, he went on to work as a bodyguard for the Beach Boys, also being tasked as an assistant to Brian Wilson, and to keep Wilson out of trouble and drug free. That didn’t always work out according to various well-known stories and lore, not necessarily by the fault of Stan, however.
• That’s life, kid.
• One Love.

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Weekend pictures of Baltimore and stories from its past with pro basketball…

1st Mariner Arena, Baltimore, MD (formerly the Baltimore Civic Center and the Baltimore Arena).

Box of Natty Boh – Soliders and Sailors Monument, W. 29th St. & N. Charles Ave., Baltimore.

Baltimore City Hall.

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A D.C. pic and some links for Sunday reading. Hope you’re having a good one …

[The National Building Museum, Washington, D.C. - K. Weidie]

LINKS.

A Western Conference executive thinks the Wizards could be in the playoff picture in the East, Ben Standig breaks it down.
[CSN Washington]

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It’s been over seven weeks since June’s trade and I still don’t have a good feel for Randy Foye. What can we really expect from him?

I’ve heard the opinion of others, read breakdowns about him, seen his highlight clips, and read his ho-hum twitter feed. But it’s hard to fully gauge Foye as a player until I’m able to study his basketball flow through full game observations.

Then I saw the below video from NBA.com. In a clip that’s only about three minutes long, I came away thinking that basketball talent notwithstanding, it’s pretty cool to have a guy with Foye’s history of overcoming challenges on the team. He’s like a mini-Caron Butler full of inspiration.

And on yea, don’t forget about his situs inversus.

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