Though he’s currently sidelined with a broken left hand, that’s hardly been the biggest health concern Cleveland Cavaliers forward Kevin Love has dealt with this season in the NBA.
As the 29-year-old All-Star revealed in a new piece for The Players’ Tribune, he suffered a panic attack just after halftime during Cleveland’s 10th game of the season, a home matchup against the Atlanta Hawks.
Love details the feeling of his heart racing, having trouble breathing and feeling everything spinning before blurting something out and dashing to the locker room for some privacy. Not knowing what was wrong, Love wound up on the training room floor thinking he was going to die.
He was brought the Cleveland Clinic where he found out nothing was physically wrong with him and returned to the court two days later. However, Love felt he needed to acknowledge what had happened to move forward so, despite some skepticism, he met with a therapist.
Going to therapy and learning more about the issue of mental health is what prompted Love to share his story in the hope that others will feel more comfortable talking about their problems.
“Everyone is going through something that we can’t see,” he wrote. “The thing is, because we can’t see it, we don’t know who’s going through what and we don’t know when and we don’t always know why. Mental health is an invisible thing, but it touches all of us at some point or another. It’s part of life.”
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