How Kevin Love Paid Homage to His Famous Family Through Incredible Vintage Jackets

“Wearing that University of Oregon letterman’s jacket was a way of paying homage to him,” he explained. “He was the person that handed me the ball before I could walk, and helped me establish my first love, which is basketball. It was just my way of showing love to my father and keeping his memory alive of how great of a basketball player he was and how beloved of a player he was at the University of Oregon, so I know he loves seeing that.”

Even though Kevin is a proud UCLA Bruin, he had no reservations about wearing conference rival Oregon’s green and gold for a night, pulling the “blood is thicker than water card” when asked about it. Once his old UCLA teammates learned the context, he said, no one gave him any grief about it. Love also cracked that when Heat coach Erik Spoelstra—who, like his power forward, spent part of his childhood in Oregon—saw the jacket, he suspected something might have been wrong. “Right when we got on the bus after the game, he was like, ‘Did you lose a bet?’”

The other one-of-one Love ensemble came at the Heat’s very next game, down the coast in Los Angeles for a bout with the Clippers. For that special night, Love once again donned a piece from the family archives, wearing a Beach Boys jacket that belonged to his dad in the 1970s. Kevin’s uncle (and Stan’s brother), Mike, is a founding member and lead singer of the band, which changed the sound of American music forever after forming in a Hawthorne, California garage in 1961.

This black zip-up jacket—which features “Love” stitched into the left breast, a Beach Boys insignia on the right breast, and a Native American motif on the back—immediately caught Love’s eye because of his self-professed affinity with the Southwest aesthetic. It also came into his possession in a similar fashion as the Oregon joint. “We were kind of rummaging through, and trying to make sense of, what felt like an entire family history,” said Love, who also found his father’s Bullets and Lakers jerseys, as well as photos of him posing with Muhammad Ali and Mick Jagger. “The fact that he had kept these, and kept them in such good condition over the years, was really cool to see.” In addition to the jacket being a tribute to the Beach Boys’ California roots, Love’s father was also a graduate of Morningside High School, a short walk from where the Clippers play.