Stan Love, a former NBA player, father to current Miami Heat player Kevin Love, brother to Beach Boys singer Mike Love, and onetime caretaker for his cousin Brian Wilson, has died. He was 76.
Kevin confirmed his father’s death in an Instagram post Sunday night, April 27. An exact cause of death was not given, though both Kevin and Mike referenced longstanding health issues in their respective tributes.
“Dad, you fought for a long time,” Kevin wrote. “The hardest stretch being these past 6 months. The most painful to witness being these last few weeks. And even at the end as you continued to deteriorate — I still saw you as a Giant. My Protector. My first Hero.”
He continued: “The words we continuously heard from you in your last chapter were how blessed you’ve been to have such a loving family. And in return how much you’ve loved your wife and kids. Your only wish was to be at home surrounded by your family when you took your dying breath. That breath came. And now it’s time to rest.”
Meanwhile, Mike wrote, “My big younger brother, you called me the superstar, but to me you are the superstar!! You always had my back! I am blessed to be your brother. I will cherish our lives spent together, whether spoofing on each other or reliving memories. I know you’re on the big court now, pounding down 3’s; don’t foul out, bro.”
Love was a 6-foot-9 forward who played college basketball at the University of Oregon before being drafted in 1971 by the Baltimore Bullets (now the Washington Wizards) with the ninth overall pick. Love spent just four seasons in the NBA, playing with the Bullets and the Los Angeles Lakers. He also did a brief stint with the San Antonio Spurs in 1975 when the team was still part of the American Basketball Association.
Near the end of his basketball career, Love was enlisted to serve as a caretaker for Wilson. At the time, his cousin was deep in the throes of an addiction and mental health crisis, struggling to work, and often at odds with his bandmates. In Peter Ames Carlin’s biography of Wilson, Catch a Wave, Love recalled sweeping Wilson’s house for drugs and trying to imbue his chaotic life with some semblance of order.
“He decided not to fight it,” Love said. “I talked him into having a sports mentality: This is what I do, this is the situation, so I’m going to fight my way through this and be a real competitor.”
Wilson’s road to recovery, however, was long, and Love continued to look after his cousin — and even serve as his bodyguard — after he retired from professional basketball. While Love’s relationship with Wilson was by all accounts stable, he often feuded with his other cousin, and Brian’s brother and bandmate, Dennis Wilson. (A 1977 Rolling Stone report that documented a massive Beach Boys blow-up includes a scene where writer John Swenson heard Love “screaming at Dennis that he was riding on Brian’s coattails. He must have said it twenty times.”)
According to Steven Gaines’ 1986 Beach Boys book, Heroes & Villains, Love and his partner, Rocky Pamplin, were dropped as Wilson’s handlers in the late Seventies after it came out that Pamplin was having an affair with Wilson’s then-wife, Marilyn. Still, Love remained protective of Brian and averse to Dennis.
This led to a shocking 1982 incident that began one night when Love and Pamplin found themselves discussing Wilson’s still-fragile condition and Dennis’ alleged role as Wilson’s drug supplier. They rolled up on Dennis’ house, pretended to be police officers, and beat him up. Love was eventually fined $750 for the altercation and earned six months probation.
“Brian is a very fragile individual with a lot of mental challenges,” Love told the Portland Tribune in 2019. “For someone to give him access to cocaine — that pissed me off. People get what they deserve. Dennis was one of the most problem persons I’ve come across.”
In 1986, Love married his wife, Karen, and the couple moved from California to Oregon to raise their family. He introduced his son, Kevin, to basketball, with the latter going on to have a remarkably successful career as an NBA champion, Olympic gold medalist, and five-time all-star.
In the early Nineties, Love was briefly dragged back into the tumultuous world of the Beach Boys, when he petitioned a Santa Monica court to be named Wilson’s conservator. This was part of a wider effort to wrest control of Wilson’s life back from Eugene Landy, the controversial therapist who’d been working with Wilson throughout the Eighties. While Wilson showed up at Love’s 1990 press conference to oppose the conservatorship, the dispute ultimately ended with a 1991 settlement that prohibited Landy from having any contact with Wilson.
Later in his life, Love became an advocate for mental health, especially after Kevin spoke publicly about his own battles with depression. “That all runs in our family back to the Great Depression,” Love said in that 2019 interview. “I’ve dealt with depression. Brian has it. Kevin’s thing is, everybody has a little something going on. Kevin wants to help people who have problems like that.”
