DeRozan, Love still taking lead on mental health
DeMar DeRozan and Kevin Love still have things to say.
It has been six years since they went public with their challenges regarding mental health. DeRozan started a conversation with a tweet about depression in February 2018. Love followed a few weeks later with a first-person essay about his anxiety. It didn’t take long for the entire NBA community to stand up and take notice.
DeRozan and Love became catalysts that sparked a shift toward destigmatizing mental health issues in the NBA. It has become a passion for both: DeRozan, the Chicago Bulls goard, has a new video series of one-on-one conversations over dinners with athletes and celebrities about mental health, while Love, now with the Miami Heat, hosted an event Monday with high school students to help them understand that everyone is going through something.
“Some of the greatest conversations that I’ve ever had and witnessed was at a dinner table. It’s fitting to be able to be in a position to have open-heart dialogue about some real things that we deal with on a daily basis,” DeRozan said in a promo for the “Dinners with DeMar” series that started last month with Draymond Green and continued Tuesday with Dwyane Wade. “So, there’s so much that can come from a dinner table conversation.”
Or a tweet. Or an essay. Or just a locker room chat. It all helps.
For Love, the path toward talking about his issues started on Nov. 5, 2017, when he was playing for Cleveland in a home game against Atlanta. It was the third quarter. His heart was racing. He couldn’t breathe normally. He didn’t know it at the time, but he was having a panic attack. Similar issues hit him in another game against Oklahoma City a couple of months later.
And a month or so after that, DeRozan tweeted about depression. Love finally knew he wasn’t alone. The path toward healing was underway.
“DeMar changed my life,” Love said. “If not for him, I don’t know. Could be dead. That’s a real thing. But DeMar’s special. He did that not knowing what would come of it.”
It made sense for some to ask how DeRozan and Love — both incredibly rich, of Fame, multi-time AllStars, living the good life of the NBA — could possibly be depressed. They helped kick down the stigma that successful people cannot struggle.
“It illustrates that success is not immune to depression,” actor Bryan Cranston tweeted in 2018, in reaction to chef Anthony Bourdain’s and fashion icon Kate Spade’s deaths by suicide just days apart.
That quote has stuck with Love ever since. He referenced it Monday, word for word.
“Teammates trusting me and allowing me to be unapologetically myself allowed me to be more comfortable in my own skin and actually able to breathe better out there on the floor,” Love said. “Sharing your story, you might change your own life. You might change the next person’s life. It’s an amazing thing.”
Love started the Kevin Love Fund to help provide resources that people need, including an educational component where teachers and counselors are given a curriculum toward social emotional learning. The basic tenet is this: letting kids know that they aren’t alone.
“It’s a beautiful thing to see where this is heading,” Love said.