Six years ago, Kevin Love, at the time a power forward for the Cleveland Cavaliers, published a now-famous essay in the Players’ Tribune titled “Everyone Is Going Through Something.” The piece describes an in-game panic attack that had blindsided Love earlier in the season, and his subsequent struggles to talk about what had happened. Love writes that he eventually started seeing a therapist, but that it hadn’t been easy to take this step. Since childhood, he’d subscribed to a notion that equated emotional vulnerability with weakness—an attitude which, Love argues, is pervasive in the cutthroat world of pro sports.
When it was published, Love’s essay was celebrated as an encouraging sign of the times; if even super macho pro ball players were opening up about their psychological struggles, it must signify a broader trend of acceptance. (Love has said that his essay was partially inspired by DeMar DeRozan, another NBA star, who had made comments on social media about dealing with depression the week before.) And, indeed, conversations around athlete mental health seem to have proliferated in recent years,…
