Bob Love always dreamed of being a speaker. But as a kid growing up in tiny Bastrop, La., the former Chicago Bull star–he was the team’s second all-time leading scorer behind Michael Jordan–stuttered so badly he hid behind classmates to avoid being called on.
“Having a command of speech is one of the greatest gifts in the world,” says Love, who at a trim 6 foot 8 inches and 235 pounds looks like he could still play competitive ball.
“When you can’t speak or communicate, it’s devastating, because the first thing that crosses people’s minds is, ‘He’s stupid.’ But I was always one of the smartest people in my class.”
Love didn’t tackle his speech problem until he was in his 40s, after he left the NBA and could only get hired as a busboy because he could barely communicate.
Now he’s the Bulls’ director of community relations, speaking 300 to 400 times a year to school groups about life’s challenges and the importance of working toward a dream. And in February, he’s running for alderman in Chicago.
It was a tough road, though. Love, nicknamed Butterbean after the beans he ate in Louisiana, grew up in the segregated south of the 1940s and ’50s, living in his grandparents’ two-bedroom house with 14 other children.
His first basketball was an old sock stuffed with grass, paper and more socks, and he aimed it at a coat hanger bent into a hoop attached to the side of the house. By high school he was a star, leading his football and basketball teams to state championships. Though he earned a football scholarship to Southern University, he switched to basketball. In 1966, after graduating with a nutrition degree, he earned a spot with the Cincinnati Royals.
In his 11-year NBA career (eight with the Bulls), Love was a three-time All-Star who led the Bulls in scoring for six seasons. But reporters wouldn’t interview him, flocking instead to Norm Van Lier, Jerry Sloan or Tom Boerwinkle. “I would have been there all night stuttering,” says Love, who was relieved not to have had to talk.
When his career ended in Seattle in 1977, the only job he could get was as a busboy at a restaurant in Nordstrom’s department store. Soon, though, the Nordstrom family began paying for speech therapy for him. After several years of hard work, Love started giving speeches and eventually became Nordstrom’s corporate spokesman. A few years later he was offered his current job with the Bulls, and returned to Chicago.
And now, says Love: “I actually get paid for talking! I’m never going to go back to where I came from, because I enjoy this life. I love it.”