Kevin Love’s Utah ties run deep

The 2006 SoCal All-Stars are one of the greatest AAU basketball teams of all time. They went on a 46-0 undefeated tour, won numerous tournaments and were headlined by the likes of Brandon Jennings, Chase Budinger and future NBA champion and five-time NBA All-Star Kevin Love.

That’s all common basketball history knowledge. What you might not know is that among the many players whose AAU team was on the wrong side of SoCal’s 2006 tear was a young William Hardy.

Twenty years later, Love is now wearing a Utah Jazz jersey, playing for head coach Will Hardy.

“I do not remember that,” Love said with wonder and amusement on his face. “I know one thing’s for certain, they lost.”

But a chance encounter with the person who would be head coach of the team in Love’s 18th NBA season is not the only tie Love has to Utah.

Love made a number of trips to Utah in the offseason when he was playing for the Minnesota Timberwolves. He had a friend that owned a place in Deer Valley and loved it so much he strongly considered buying property of his own. Then, when Love was traded to the Cleveland Cavaliers in 2014, he became close with the team’s sports performance director, Alex Moore.

Moore, an Australian native who now works for the Illawarra Hawks of the NBL, had joined the Cavaliers after spending years working for the United States Ski and Snowboarding teams as the strength and conditioning coordinator. Needless to say, he was very familiar with Park City, Salt Lake City and also had a fondness for Utah.

“He was amazing to work with, he was the first guy we gravitated towards, and we hit it off and then we just had this common thread of Park City,” Love said. “We ended up spending time here in Salt Lake City, in Southern Utah as well — like four or five weeks of the summer, from 2015 to 2018."

He’d visit Bryce Canyon National Park, a number of different slot canyons, head down to Page, Arizona, and take in all the scenery that the area had to offer. Utah became an offseason training ground where he could enjoy the natural beauty.

Since then, Love and his wife Kate have spent more of the NBA offseason in the Pacific Northwest, where they’re both from (Love is from Oregon and Kate is from Vancouver, British Columbia). But the ties to Utah don’t end there.

Love has shared the court with Andrei Kirilenko, Ricky Rubio, Donovan Mitchell, Jordan Clarkson, Collin Sexton and a number of other former Jazzmen over the course of his career. He forged friendships with Joe Ingles and Mark Eaton. And on more than one occasion over the years he’d been favorite when it came to players fans wanted the Jazz to target in a trade.

Now, at the tail end of his career, Love is in Utah. He’s not here to pad the stat sheet like he did in years prior. Instead, he’s here to be a guiding light for the younger players on the team. But it wasn’t a sure thing that he would actually come to Utah.

As part of the three-team trade that sent John Collins to the Los Angeles Clippers this summer, the Jazz acquired Love and Kyle Anderson from the Miami Heat. But immediately there were rumors swirling that Love could be looking for a buyout and wasn’t going to actually don a Jazz jersey.

The rumors didn’t completely capture the full story, though.

“Really, truly, it all started with my two young daughters,” Love said. “I have a two year old who’s going to preschool in Miami, and then an eight month old ... I think I was weighing the personal side of things, and moving away from my daughters, or am I going to take them with me? And just wanted to gather all the information that I could.”

After speaking with Hardy and Jazz president of basketball operations Austin Ainge, Love decided that he felt like he could make a really positive impact with the Jazz and that he had value. Soon, Love’s wife, daughters and their dog Vestry will join him in the Beehive State.

Love has seen every side of the NBA and knows what its like to be a young player on a predominantly young team. He also knows what it takes to win at the highest levels and the journey it takes to getting there.

“I think that he’s excited to help these these young guys grow,” Hardy said. “I also know that he’s a crazy competitor and that he’s going to come to camp and he’s not going to let them off the hook ... We need some depth in our locker room in terms of depth of experience, and somebody who’s seen the NBA from a lot of different angles, and so I think that he’s going to be a tremendous leader for our group.”