May is Mental Health Awareness Month, a time to encourage speaking out, learn about the realities of others’ struggles, and support people who are struggling. Throughout all of sports, mental health has become an increasingly important topic of discussion. This wasn’t always the case, especially in the NBA, as mental health was largely stigmatized until recent years. The two players mentioned below had a significant impact in creating a more open and supportive environment.
DeMar DeRozan
In the middle of the 2018 NBA season, DeRozan tweeted out, “This depression got the best of me.” With this one tweet, Derozan helped set off a domino effect in discussions of mental health throughout the league. The timing of the tweet seemed strange; Derozan was just named an All-Star, and the Raptors were atop the Eastern Conference. Yet, his external success did not reflect the internal pressure Derozan was facing.
A stigma around the topic prevented DeRozan from speaking out at first. As the Raptors’ star at the time, DeRozan helped spark a conversation about mental health across the league. Within months, the NBA launched Mindhealth, an initiative to help players learn about mental health and access resources. The next year, it was mandated for teams to have mental health specialists and plans to respond to similar emergencies.
DeRozan has continued his advocacy through his podcast Dinners with DeMar and by speaking to young athletes about positive coping strategies for mental health struggles.
Kevin Love
The 2016 NBA champion has documented his battle with panic attacks and anxiety. In the 2018 Players’ Tribune, Love spoke about his first encounter with this new, frightening experience, stating, “It came out of nowhere. I’d never had one before. I didn’t even know if they were real.” The societal pressure Love felt from a young age to keep his emotions private was a major factor in preventing him from speaking out. Before being faced with his own challenges, Love saw “mental health as someone else’s problem.”
After he experienced a panic attack, he realized it was necessary to confront it and started to speak with a therapist. Love recalled his first meeting and how the conversation ranged away from basketball to a wide variety of topics, including his relationship with his Grandma Carol. Love advocated for a more open environment where others could speak about their struggles, emphasizing, “Everyone is going through something we can’t see.”
In that same year, Love started the Kevin Love Fund, which is focused on “research, education, and narrative change to break the stigma around mental health.” Through 2025, these efforts have reached over 100,000 students. Along with his alma mater, Love committed over $500,000 to mental health research at the UCLA Department of Psychology. In 2020, his advocacy was recognized when he received the Arthur Ashe Courage Award.
By choosing vulnerability over toughness, these two athletes help start a much-needed conversation in the world of sports and found that true strength isn’t about staying silent. It’s about finding the courage to speak up.
