[2] He grew up in Lake Oswego, Oregon, where he was childhood friends and Little League teammates with fellow future NBA star Klay Thompson.

[3] Love played basketball from his earliest days;[4] as a child, he would practice his bounce passes with a cardboard box and study tapes of Wes Unseld.

[8][9] The following summer, Nike removed him from its Portland Elite Legends AAU team after he chose to participate in the Reebok ABCD Camp against other top recruits.

Following the draft, Love was traded, along with Mike Miller, Brian Cardinal, and Jason Collins to the Minnesota Timberwolves, with the third overall pick O. J. Mayo, Antoine Walker, Marko Jarić and Greg Buckner going to the Grizzlies.

[31][32] After the team's leading scorer Al Jefferson was sidelined for the rest of the season with a torn ACL in February,[33] Love's minutes increased, and he was named NBA Rookie of the Month for March.

[38] Love began the season on the injured list when, in a pre-season game on October 16, 2009, against the Chicago Bulls, he broke the fourth metacarpal in his left hand by banging it against the elbow of teammate Oleksiy Pecherov.

The day before, Love was not selected as an All-Star as a reserve although averaging 21.4 points, a league-best 15.5 rebounds, shooting 43.9 percent from 3-point range, and having 34 straight double-doubles for the 11–37 Timberwolves.

Love established career highs in rebounding, scoring (20.2), assists (2.5), double-doubles (64), field goal percentage (.470), free throw shooting (.850), and minutes played (35.8).

[63] While amassing double-doubles, a statistical hallmark of traditional power forwards, Love was also evolving into a stretch four, making a career-high 41.7 percent of his 3's, while upping his three-point attempts to almost three per game.

[69] The four-year contract extension worth up to $62 million was finally agreed to, and signed, on January 25, allowing Love to become an unrestricted free agent as early as 2015.

[100] Cleveland swept the series 4–0, but Love missed the remainder of the playoffs after he dislocated his left shoulder in the first quarter of Game 4 when he got tangled with the Celtics' Kelly Olynyk while battling for a loose ball.

[111] Many credited Love's defense on league MVP Stephen Curry in the final minutes of Game 7 as a main contributor to Cleveland sealing the win late in the championship clinching victory.

[118] However, on February 14, 2017, he underwent arthroscopic surgery to remove a loose body from his left knee, and was subsequently ruled out for approximately six weeks, thus missing the All-Star Game.

[121] With 15 points in Game 5 of the series, Love helped the Cavaliers defeat the Celtics 135–102 to claim their third straight Eastern Conference title and a return trip to the NBA Finals.

During the game, Love became the fourth player in Cleveland history with 500 career playoff rebounds, joining LeBron James, Tristan Thompson and Zydrunas Ilgauskas.

In the aftermath of LeBron James' departure in free agency to the Los Angeles Lakers, the Cavaliers aggressively pushed to secure Love for the long term.

[145] On May 12, 2021, Love logged his fifth double-double of the season with a season-high 30 points and 14 rebounds in a 102–94 win over the Boston Celtics, ending the Cavaliers' 11-game losing streak.

[160] He was also selected for the 2020 Olympic team in Tokyo, but withdrew after the third exhibition game, stating that he was not fully recovered from the right calf injury that sidelined him for much of the 2020–21 season.

[167] In March 2018, in response to DeMar DeRozan's public discussion of his struggles with depression, Love revealed that he had been seeing a therapist for several months following a panic attack during a game in November 2017.

In a first-person article in The Players' Tribune in March 2018 entitled, "Everyone Is Going Through Something", Love wrote: "Mental health is an invisible thing, but it touches all of us at some point or another.

"[168][169][170] In August 2018, Love continued his advocacy for mental health awareness, discussing his family's history of depression, along with his own struggles with anxiety, rage, and "dark times" where he would hide in his room and not talk to anyone.

[171] Love committed to forming a foundation focusing on mental health, particularly for young boys, adding that he believes he's "found [his] life's work.

[175] Early beneficiaries included two programs to empower high school students to make healthy choices and the UCLA Athletics Department.

On March 12, 2020, Love's fund gave $100,000 to the support staff of Rocket Mortgage FieldHouse, where the Cleveland Cavaliers play, who were unable to work during the 2020 coronavirus pandemic.

[177] On April 26, 2020, The Kevin Love Fund sent a truckload of lunches to the staff of the Cleveland Clinic's Medical Intensive Care Unit and its COVID-19 testing sites, and appeared by FaceTime to personally thank the healthcare workers there.

[179] The $1 million investment will support a scholar at one of the top-ranked psychology departments in the United States whose work helps diagnose, prevent, treat and destigmatize anxiety and depression.

[184] On television, he appeared as himself on the Disney Channel show The Suite Life on Deck during the season 3 episode "Twister: Part 1" along with Dwight Howard and Deron Williams.

[188] Online, he was part of an internet advertising campaign in 2012 by PepsiCo for Pepsi Max that featured the character "Uncle Drew" played by Love's future NBA teammate Kyrie Irving.

It was wildly popular, and reported to be the second most watched ad on YouTube that year and among the 50 most-viewed viral videos worldwide, garnering more than 22 million views.

[189] PepsiCo and its advertising agency Davie Brown Entertainment quickly rolled out another commercial later that year, "Uncle Drew: Chapter 2", this time co-starring Kevin Love.