Robert "bob" Love
"road to NBA stardom"
Robert "Bob" Love & Robert Smith
Early Years
Robert Earl Love’s road to NBA stardom was, to say the least, long and winding. Nicknamed “Butterbean” as a boy due to his fondness for the vegetable, Bob Love grew up in a two-bedroom shanty located in rural northeastern Louisiana as one of 14 children. Bob’s mother was just 15 years old when he was born, and his father was nowhere to be found. When he was eight his mother married an ex-Marine who seemed to be angry all the time and would hit Bob whenever the mood struck him. Not long after they married, Bob ran away, moving in with his grandmother, who was only too happy to take him in. As Bob tells the story, when his stepfather came to get him, his grandmother answered the door brandishing an axe handle. “Get out of here,” she said. “The boy lives here now.”
Bob had a favorite uncle who used to watch over him a lot when he was young who had a severe stutter when he spoke. He says he loved and enjoyed being around his uncle so much that he started stuttering as well. When he began going to school he would often sit in the back of the classroom praying his teachers wouldn’t call on him to answer because all that did was to egg-on a number of classmates who liked to tease and laugh at him. Bob, who has always been a gentle and kind soul, says he was forced to develop a thick skin because he didn’t want to let anybody know how embarrassed and ashamed he felt.
As a little boy Butterbean loved playing sports, but growing up poor meant he had to improvise. For example, his basketball playing days began with an old sock stuffed with grass, paper and other socks to form a ball, and he bent a wire coat hanger into a hoop and stapled it to the side of his grandmother’s house so he could practice his jumpshot.
When Love reached high school he still had a severe stutter but that didn’t stop him from ending up as the starting quarterback on the varsity football team. You see Bob didn’t stutter when he sang, so he used to sing the play calls in the huddle and at the line before the ball was snapped. He had a really strong arm and could throw downfield with ease and precision. Then after undergoing a major growth spurt between his sophomore and junior years, shooting up from 6’0” to 6’7”, Bob quarterbacked the Morehouse Tigers to a Louisiana state championship.
After football season that junior year, he decided to try out for the basketball team, but he couldn’t crack the starting lineup because Lucius “Luke” Jackson, a future Olympic gold medalist (Team USA, 1964) and NBA 1st round draft pick (4th overall by the Philadelphia 76ers in 1964), was better and played the same position. However, after Jackson graduated and was playing in college, Bob saw the floor a lot as a senior and he quickly became the best player on the team, averaging over 30 points a game.
College
Up until that point nobody in his family had ever thought about going to college, but Bob always had the drive to become something special, so when coaches started showing up on his doorstep with scholarship offers, Butterbean was ready to listen to their pitches. However, the men who knocked on his door weren’t basketball coaches, they coached football. In the end it came down to Grambling State or Southern University, but when the Grambling State coach showed up 90 minutes late for a meeting, Bob informed him he was going to Southern to play ball.
Then in the summer before his freshman year began, Southern’s football coach, A.W. Mumford, happened to come across Bob playing a pick-up game against some of the school’s varsity basketball players inside the school’s gym. Mumford quickly realized his prized recruit’s best chance for a bright future wasn’t on the gridiron but rather on the hardwood. Mumford pulled Love aside and urged him to seriously think about switching sports. It didn’t take long for Butterbean to decide to make the jump because he had always felt apprehensive about going toe-to-toe against hungry and angry defensive lines made up of football players a lot bigger and stronger than him.
Thanks to Mumford, Love was able to join the basketball team where it didn’t take long for him to make an impact. Love’s scoring average improved each year, going from 12.8 points per game his freshman season to 22.6 as a sophomore to 25.6 as a junior and 30.6 as a senior. By the time it was all said and done, Bob “Butterbean” Love had completely rewritten Southern’s record book. Pro scouts took notice, however, more than a few were wary of players from small black colleges. Some completely dismissed the idea of drafting a player like Love, believing the level of competition he faced couldn’t compare to those who played at major schools such as UCLA, Notre Dame, Indiana or Kentucky. So it wasn’t a shock when he ended up being a fourth round pick of the Cincinnati Royals at a time when the NBA consisted of just nine teams and rookies rarely played.
Continue >>
Robert Earl Love’s road to NBA stardom was, to say the least, long and winding. Nicknamed “Butterbean” as a boy due to his fondness for the vegetable, Bob Love grew up in a two-bedroom shanty located in rural northeastern Louisiana as one of 14 children. Bob’s mother was just 15 years old when he was born, and his father was nowhere to be found. When he was eight his mother married an ex-Marine who seemed to be angry all the time and would hit Bob whenever the mood struck him. Not long after they married, Bob ran away, moving in with his grandmother, who was only too happy to take him in. As Bob tells the story, when his stepfather came to get him, his grandmother answered the door brandishing an axe handle. “Get out of here,” she said. “The boy lives here now.”
Bob had a favorite uncle who used to watch over him a lot when he was young who had a severe stutter when he spoke. He says he loved and enjoyed being around his uncle so much that he started stuttering as well. When he began going to school he would often sit in the back of the classroom praying his teachers wouldn’t call on him to answer because all that did was to egg-on a number of classmates who liked to tease and laugh at him. Bob, who has always been a gentle and kind soul, says he was forced to develop a thick skin because he didn’t want to let anybody know how embarrassed and ashamed he felt.
As a little boy Butterbean loved playing sports, but growing up poor meant he had to improvise. For example, his basketball playing days began with an old sock stuffed with grass, paper and other socks to form a ball, and he bent a wire coat hanger into a hoop and stapled it to the side of his grandmother’s house so he could practice his jumpshot.
When Love reached high school he still had a severe stutter but that didn’t stop him from ending up as the starting quarterback on the varsity football team. You see Bob didn’t stutter when he sang, so he used to sing the play calls in the huddle and at the line before the ball was snapped. He had a really strong arm and could throw downfield with ease and precision. Then after undergoing a major growth spurt between his sophomore and junior years, shooting up from 6’0” to 6’7”, Bob quarterbacked the Morehouse Tigers to a Louisiana state championship.
After football season that junior year, he decided to try out for the basketball team, but he couldn’t crack the starting lineup because Lucius “Luke” Jackson, a future Olympic gold medalist (Team USA, 1964) and NBA 1st round draft pick (4th overall by the Philadelphia 76ers in 1964), was better and played the same position. However, after Jackson graduated and was playing in college, Bob saw the floor a lot as a senior and he quickly became the best player on the team, averaging over 30 points a game.
College
Up until that point nobody in his family had ever thought about going to college, but Bob always had the drive to become something special, so when coaches started showing up on his doorstep with scholarship offers, Butterbean was ready to listen to their pitches. However, the men who knocked on his door weren’t basketball coaches, they coached football. In the end it came down to Grambling State or Southern University, but when the Grambling State coach showed up 90 minutes late for a meeting, Bob informed him he was going to Southern to play ball.
Then in the summer before his freshman year began, Southern’s football coach, A.W. Mumford, happened to come across Bob playing a pick-up game against some of the school’s varsity basketball players inside the school’s gym. Mumford quickly realized his prized recruit’s best chance for a bright future wasn’t on the gridiron but rather on the hardwood. Mumford pulled Love aside and urged him to seriously think about switching sports. It didn’t take long for Butterbean to decide to make the jump because he had always felt apprehensive about going toe-to-toe against hungry and angry defensive lines made up of football players a lot bigger and stronger than him.
Thanks to Mumford, Love was able to join the basketball team where it didn’t take long for him to make an impact. Love’s scoring average improved each year, going from 12.8 points per game his freshman season to 22.6 as a sophomore to 25.6 as a junior and 30.6 as a senior. By the time it was all said and done, Bob “Butterbean” Love had completely rewritten Southern’s record book. Pro scouts took notice, however, more than a few were wary of players from small black colleges. Some completely dismissed the idea of drafting a player like Love, believing the level of competition he faced couldn’t compare to those who played at major schools such as UCLA, Notre Dame, Indiana or Kentucky. So it wasn’t a shock when he ended up being a fourth round pick of the Cincinnati Royals at a time when the NBA consisted of just nine teams and rookies rarely played.
Continue >>