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

When you’ve played in the NBA for 17 years like Kevin Love, you have to find ways to keep things fresh—especially when it comes to your outfits in the pregame tunnel. There are only so many ways to turn heads, and almost all of it’s been done before. That’s why the five-time All-Star, who now suits up for the Miami Heat, recently opted for some looks that can’t be bought off the rack. For the Heat’s January 11 game in Portland—roughly 20 minutes from where Love went to high school in Lake Oswego, Oregon—the big man arrived wearing his dad’s University of Oregon jacket.

The jacket, as Love explained on Instagram, is from his father Stan’s 1968-69 season with the Ducks. Stan was no slouch, either, averaging 17.8 points per game as a sophomore in ’68-69. He finished his college career with the most points per game of any Oregon player from the pre-three pointer days, before going on to play professionally for the Baltimore Bullets, Los Angeles Lakers, and San Antonio Spurs. “His game was ahead of his time,” Kevin told GQ on a recent Zoom call. “He was an athletic big man that could really shoot the ball and he would've made a lot of money in today's game.”

As for the jacket, Kevin had seen photos of Stan wearing it and knew it would be a perfect thing to break out when the Heat made their annual trip to the Pacific Northwest—so long as they could dig it up. “When I saw him wearing that, I asked him, ‘Dad, do you still have that jacket?’ We went through the storage in our garage and I saw this beautiful letterman's jacket, and tried it on. The leather had kind of patinaed over time and there were a few tears and maybe some—I don't know if they were sweat stains, but almost like watermarks. I felt it added character to the jacket, and it fit!”

Going home, Kevin says, always evokes some melancholy memories that also have a way of filling his proverbial cup. “It’s good for the soul,” he said. In recent years, Stan, now 75, has dealt with some health issues as well, which made Kevin want to honor him even more.

“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.

In 2025, Love guesses he’s the biggest Beach Boys fan still hanging around the NBA. He snickered when talking about how one of the biggest rock stars in the world will always just be Uncle Mike to him. “Going to these [Beach Boys] concerts, I'd say, ‘Oh, okay. People really love their music,’” he deadpanned. (Love says Motown and classic rock were in heavy rotation at his house growing up, before he and his brother discovered Green Day, Nirvana, and ’90s hip-hop.)

When it comes to getting dressed for work, Love also draws inspiration from a slew of other sources outside his family. He mentioned being heavily influenced by classic films, citing 1973’s The Sting as one of his favorite movies, and listed Paul Newman, Robert Redford, Cary Grant, and Jimmy Stewart as some of his sartorial north stars. With that in mind, he was geeked up about suits coming back “in a major way” and left our conversation with one final nugget that can be applied to anyone’s dressing strategy, NBA star or not.

“What I’m wearing very much symbolizes not only me as a basketball player, but an expression of who I really am.”