Kevin Love isn’t mad at the perceived hate.
In projecting the NBA future of likely No. 1 overall pick Cooper Flagg, sports talk show host Dan Patrick compared the Duke star to five-time NBA All-Star Kevin Love.
Not as a compliment.
“If you start to look at player comps, which we do, you automatically are going to go to a white guy who’s 6-foot-8 or so,” Patrick said on The Dan Patrick Show on Peacock and Fox Sports Radio. “Now, listed at 6-foot-9, but is he a Larry Bird-type of player? If you said his career was going to be like Kevin Love’s, would that be a disappointment? And it probably would be.”
A rebounding machine early in his NBA career, Love was the No. 5 overall pick in the 2008 draft out of UCLA.
He is in the 17th season of a career that includes two All-NBA selections, an NBA championship with the Cavaliers and a Most Improved Player Award in 2010-11.
But, in an era of athletes fighting with those paid to have sports opinions on social-media channels, Love took Patrick’s comment in stride.
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“For those who will take this as a shot at me …I don’t take it as such,” Love wrote on X. “I was pure skill & will. Cooper is far more talented than I ever was and if he stays healthy will have a far better career. He could very well have a statue by the time he’s finished. I’m a HUGE fan.”
The unselfish box-score-filler Flagg will lead Duke against Alabama in the East Regional final in Newark, N.J. on Saturday night.
He will be the prize of the NBA draft lottery — maybe for the Nets?
“This is somebody who scrimmages against the Olympic team, held his own,” Patrick said. “He’s 18 years of age. He’s going to make $1 billion if he stays healthy. He’ll probably get a couple of max deals in there, but is he Keith Van Horn, who went No. 2 overall in his (draft) year out of Utah.”
Patrick settled on Kevin Durant as a Flagg comparison.
That’s quite a jump from Love and certainly from Van Horn, who never made an All-Star team.