Photo by Luke Gronneberg
Former Chicago Bulls star Bob Love overcame a 47-year stuttering
problem - and now makes his living as a public speaker. He told his
story Monday at Minnesota State University.
MANKATO — Bob Love's most embarrassing moment came in 1972, at a public-appearance event.
Former Chicago Bulls star Bob Love overcame a 47-year stuttering problem - and now makes his living as a public speaker. He told his story Monday at Minnesota State University.
Its organizers had promised the Chicago Bulls star with a severe stutter that he wouldn't have to speak. But when he was introduced to the crowd, 3,000 unknowing people began to chant, "Speech, speech..."
Love was trapped. He went to the podium and stood there for three minutes, uttering not a word. His humiliation complete, he made a quick exit.
"I went to my car and cried," he says.
Love played 11 seasons in the National Basketball Association, including eight with the Bulls. The three-time NBA all-star led the team in scoring seven of those years, and his 12,623 points is second only to Michael Jordan on the Bulls' all-time scoring list.
Yet after he retired from basketball, his speech impediment continued to be his albatross, and he was reduced to busing dishes in a restaurant for $4.45 an hour.
Love told his story Monday at Minnesota State University, where he spoke at the behest of the campus chapter of the National Student Speech Language and Hearing Association.
The irony of which is not lost on him.
"After 47 years of not being able to utter a single word without stuttering, you know what I do for a living now? I talk."
Love has been the Bulls Director of Community Affairs since 1992, a position he achieved after his employer in that restaurant steered Love to a speech therapist.
He's also a motivational speaker, appearing at more than 300 schools and other engagements each year.
His message carries the familiar motivational-speaker mantras - never say never, always give 110 percent, follow your dreams - but he flavors it with simple, bittersweet tales of his painful youth and adulthood.
Love grew up poor in Louisiana, and not being able to afford a basket or basketball, he nailed a coat hanger to the side of his grandmother's house and fashioned a ball from his grandfather's socks.
And he lived in constant dread of having to speak aloud.
His grandmother thought she had a cure. Put three marbles under your tongue, she told him, and you won't stutter.
"I'd swallow two of those suckers every time," he says.
He began his NBA career with the Cincinnati Royal before being traded to the Milwaukee Bucks.
Though he led the Bucks in scoring, he says he received a post-season call from the team's general manager, who told him that his play was fine, but his speech difficulties had prompted the image-minded club to cut him loose.
Love says he ran into that general manager years later, and couldn't resist a zinger - articulately delivered.
"I said, 'Sir, are you still trying to find that guy who can TALK that ball into the basket?'"
Love told the gathered students Monday to be thankful for that which they may take for granted.
"You have the gift of speech, and if you have the gift of speech, students, I applaud you, because it's the most beautiful gift in the world."
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