Dwyane Wade Opens Up About Incident with Kevin Love While Playing with Cavaliers

AP Photo/Wilfredo Lee

Dwyane Wade spoke with Carmelo Anthony on the latest episode of “What’s in Your Glass?” and expressed regret and remorse over a previously reported incident between him and ex-Cleveland Cavaliers teammate Kevin Love.

Sam Leweck of Cavaliers Nation relayed the quotes from Wade, who played with the Cavs for more than half the 2017-18 season and said he wasn’t aware of Love’s struggles with his mental health:

“I had an incident in Cleveland with Kevin Love where I didn’t know that he dealt with or suffered from any mental health issues.  I was on him, because I’m an old dude trying to—this is my last ride to win a championship, and I didn’t know what he was dealing with mentally. So we had a very ugly incident as a team that happened that came out in the papers and all those things about it, and then once I left Cleveland, Kevin became more outspoken and became really a voice for mental health. And I didn’t have any idea.”

The Athletic’s Joe Vardon, then for Cleveland.com, broke news on the aforementioned incident on Jan. 30, 2019. The incident occurred in Jan. 2018, when the then-floundering Cavaliers were struggling midway through the season:

“As things started heading south for the Cavs in January, Wade was an instigator in the infamous team meeting Jan. 22, hours before they flew to San Antonio.

“Yes, Thomas was upset that Kevin Love went home with an illness before a 24-point loss to Oklahoma City had concluded on Jan. 20, and that he was not at practice the following day. But, sources said, it was Wade who first made an issue of it on Monday, challenging Lue to disclose where Love had been. Numerous players verbally attacked Love, who eventually explained his absence as part of a wide-ranging, heated discussion in which virtually no one was immune from criticism.”

Two months later, Love went public with his own battles with mental health in a Players’ Tribune piece, revealing among other things that he had suffered a panic attack during his team’s Nov. 5, 2017 game against the Atlanta Hawks.

Wade expressed his remorse for what happened during the team meeting and said he hoped he could apologize to him in person someday:

“Kevin Love may not like me as a person because of that moment, but if I ever got the opportunity to see him again, I’d just want to apologize to him because I didn’t know what he was dealing with, and I was just trying to say, ‘We need you, we need you,’ but I didn’t know that he was dealing with something that was so serious that I could not fathom or even know what he had to deal with.”

Wade’s time with the Cavs was over after 46 games, as the team traded him back to the Miami Heat, where the NBA legend spent his first 13 seasons. The 13-time All-Star and three-time NBA champion retired following the 2018-19 season.

Love, who spent six years with the Minnesota Timberwolves before joining the Cavs in 2014-15, is entering his 14th NBA season. He’s a five-time All-Star and was part of Cleveland’s 2016 championship team.