NBA’s most surprising rookie? Caleb Love, Blazers’ undrafted gem mentored by Damian Lillard
Since Dec. 23, Caleb Love ranks fourth among all Trail Blazers in total minutes and overall plus-minus, ranking third on the team in scoring over that span. Soobum Im/NBAE via Getty Images
Jason Quick
Jan. 26, 2026 4:00 am PST
PORTLAND, Ore. – Within the Trail Blazers, franchise star Damian Lillard has a special name for rookie Caleb Love.
“Ask him what I always call him,” Lillard says. “Ask him …”
Lillard first used the nickname in November at Golden State, when Love hit six 3-pointers on the way to 26 points during the Blazers’ 127-123 win.
Top-10 pick! Lillard trumpeted.
Top-10 pick!
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“Top-10 pick … Just hearing that from him made me so excited … like, he doesn’t even know,” Love said. “I’m still a little kid when it comes to him. I still look up to him.”
There is a backstory to Lillard’s nickname, a story with roots that go deeper than Love’s outburst at Golden State and beyond his January splash onto the NBA’s radar.
Last summer, Love reserved a private room at a Tucson, Ariz. restaurant, ready to celebrate, ready to soak in an accomplishment of a lifetime: getting drafted into the NBA. A big-screen television stood in the front of the room, so his family, friends, and University of Arizona teammates and coaches could watch the moment.
The first day of the draft, NBA teams selected 30 players. Love was not one of them.
The second day, his family, friends and team came back to the restaurant. Same room. Same television. Same result. There were 29 more picks. Love was not one of them.
He wanted to cry.
“I didn’t shed no tears, not right then and there,” Love said. “But I did later, when I got home. I wasn’t going to break down in front of everyone because they came for me, and I didn’t want them to see me like that. So, I kind of kept my cool.”
He described it as feeling devastated. After all, there was a time when being undrafted was unimaginable.
He was among the best of the best coming out of high school … McDonald’s All-American … Nike Hoop Summit … Jordan Brand Classic … Gatorade Player of the Year in Missouri …ranked the second-best point guard in America … a full scholarship to prestigious North Carolina.
“You name it, I had the accolades,” Love said.
But soon, he would learn that the moves he made in high school weren’t translating to college. He was no longer the quickest. The most explosive. The most skilled.
Amid his struggles to find his footing and place within the college landscape, Love in 2022 received an invitation to attend the inaugural Formula Zero basketball camp, put on by Lillard.
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The invitation was a thrill for Love because Lillard was his favorite player. They were similar in build. They had similar shot mechanics. And Love admired how Lillard played for a small school (Weber State) and fought through a broken foot in college to become the sixth overall pick and NBA Rookie of the Year.
“I just loved his story,” Love said.
So, between his sophomore and junior year of college, Love accepted the invitation — sent to 15 college players — and in the summer of 2022 attended the four-day camp in Portland.
At the time, Lillard was 10 years into his NBA career and had become too familiar with a cautionary tale of the NBA: Players who were talented enough to be in the league, but were out of the league because they didn’t have professional habits. Lillard wanted to share the “formula” that helped establish the foundation for his record-setting career: Character, hard work and accountability.
“It is designed to be a basketball camp, but it’s also like a mentorship program,” Lillard said.
Throughout that 2022 camp, there were several players who would later make the NBA: Keyonte George (Utah) and Marcus Sasser (Detroit) among them. But Lillard kept noticing the kid from North Carolina, Love.
“He had some tough days, where (instructors) got on his ass, but he just kept figuring it out,” Lillard said.
Then came a moment that was captured in a photo Lillard still keeps. The picture shows Lillard and Love having a one-on-one conversation in the gym bleachers.
“One day, he pulled me to the side, and was like, ‘Can I ask you some questions?’” Lillard said.
For more than an hour, Love picked Lillard’s brain. He wanted to know how to make it to the NBA. What he should work on. How to handle teammates. How to know if he was doing well. How to know if he was being selfish.
“He asked me all the questions that kids don’t really ask, you know?” Lillard said. “I could tell he was really trying to figure it out.”
They exchanged phone numbers, and a friendship and mentorship had begun.
Love left the 2022 Formula Zero camp with more than Lillard’s phone number. He left with the MVP trophy, which usually stands for Most Valuable Player.
“We changed it: we said it’s not only Most Valuable Player; it’s the Most Valuable Person,” said Phil Beckner, Lillard’s trainer who also runs the camp. “We wanted it to be the person who will carry on the example of the formula: Character, hard work, accountability.”
Love embodied that spirit.
“Unlike a lot of those highly-rated kids, Caleb had two things: he had a humility to take coaching, and he had hunger to work harder,” said Beckner.
But this wasn’t a storybook, happy ending. Love’s MVP at the camp didn’t immediately translate. The perspective he gleaned from Lillard, and the work ethic he learned from Beckner, didn’t produce fruit his third season at North Carolina. He shot a ghastly 29.9 percent from 3-point range.
He decided to transfer to Arizona, and one summer after impressing at the Formula Zero camp, Love crawled into a shell. He didn’t communicate with trainers. He didn’t point fingers, and he didn’t make excuses. He instead looked at himself.
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“I had to look in the mirror and take a step back, you know?” Love said. “I was like, this is not the end-all, be-all for me. I’m not going to be one of those could’ve-should’ve-would’ve guys who peaked in high school.”
Beckner, who had spent summers training Love since his freshman year at North Carolina, was worried by the lack of communication. He wondered if he upset Love with his hard coaching. Eventually, Beckner learned that Love was simply embracing one of Beckner’s signature phrases.
“He made a choice to be an overcomer and not a victim,” Beckner said. “He chose that summer to run to hard things, to run to the truth.”
What was that truth?
“The truth was I wasn’t as good as I thought,” Love said.
His mentor, Lillard, was pleased to realize his understudy had reached that conclusion.
“All young players need to realize that, but most of them don’t,” Lillard said. “There are certain things that go into dudes being able to do this for 82 games, year-after-year-after-year, when pressure is on you, and there is criticism and all that. And it’s all the things we talk about at that camp … and he was about that.”
Love had the knowledge. He just needed to implement it into his everyday life. He began to do the little things Lillard had told him: stretching before workouts, getting treatment on your body, strict diet, and identifying a thought process which helps with mental toughness.
Lillard’s own motto: Everything going on around the outside of you is making the inside of you weaker.
In other words, your strength is what is inside you: your heart and your mind.
As a symbol of his re-dedication, and new outlook, Love went to his barber and shaved his head while preparing for his first season at Arizona..
“I just wanted a fresh start,” Love said.
Love responded with a stellar season at Arizona. He was Pac-12 player of the year and named an All-American. His fifth and final season was solid (17.2 points, 34 percent on 3’s), enough so that Love believed he would be drafted.
When he wasn’t, he retreated to his room and cried.
“It was tough, man. Like, everybody was there and it’s getting to like pick 45, and I’m just looking around … my parents aren’t really saying anything … it was real quiet. And once that last pick got called, and I obviously hadn’t been picked it was like … WOW.”
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Perhaps it was luck, or perhaps it was meant to be, but an NBA team did come calling that night. It was the team of his idol, the team of his mentor, Lillard.
The Trail Blazers offered him a two-way contract, a tool NBA teams use to develop players by splitting their time between the G League and the parent team. Two-way players make roughly half of the NBA rookie minimum — around $550,000 — and they are limited to 50 games on the active NBA roster, unless the team converts them to a standard NBA contract.
Lillard said he wasn’t consulted about Love, but he said he had an immediate thought when he heard the Blazers had signed him.
“He’s going to make the team,” Lillard said .”That’s the first thing I thought: He is going to make our team.”
“Me and Dame are getting closer and closer every day,” Love said. “He’s been such a help for me and such a shoulder to lean on.”Jared Lennon/Getty Images
Love not only made the team, but he has become a key member. With a rash of injuries to guards, interim coach Tiago Splitter threw Love into the fire as soon as the season’s fourth game. He has played in every game but seven.
It turns out that November game against Golden State, when Love had 26 points which triggered Lillard to call him Top-10 pick wasn’t a one-off. In 12 games in January, Love is averaging 15.8 points, 3.6 assists and 3.5 rebounds while making 37.8 percent of his 3-pointers. He leads all two-way players in scoring (11.3 points per game), and among all rookies, he is eighth in scoring and has made the fourth most 3-pointers (81).
“He’s really stepped up,” Splitter said. “But what I’m most impressed with is the effort he has put in defensively. He doesn’t have the biggest wingspan or jump the highest, but he always puts in the effort.”
Love has been active for 37 games (one start), meaning he has until Feb. 22 (13 games) before the Blazers need to make a decision whether to convert him to an NBA contract or to relegate him to the G League. The Blazers don’t have an open roster spot, but the Feb. 5 trade deadline is a chance to create roster flexibility to open a full-time spot for Love and/or the Blazers’ other two-way breakout player Sidy Cissoko.
“I’m just trying to make the most of my opportunity,” Love said. “Until I get where I want to get — having my contract converted — I don’t want to get ahead of myself. But if I do get converted, it will definitely be a milestone that I’m going to be proud of, for sure.”
He says he feels like he is free, like he is back in high school, playing with the joy of a youngster. He balances that joy with the sting of that June day, sitting silent in a restaurant while other names were called. And then, he contrasts that with the thrill of having his idol and mentor gassing him up.
“I keep telling him: The draft happened already, but today you are a Top-10 pick,” Lillard said. “Yep … Top-10 pick. That’s Caleb.”
Lillard’s mentorship, however, is not finished. Yes, Love has been playing like a Top-10 pick, but he still needs reminders that making the league isn’t enough. He wants to stay.
“I tell him, ‘Consistency becomes who you are,”’ Lillard said. “So, like this morning … I was there (in the gym). He wasn’t. I know that’s my game. That’s how I’ve always operated, but why weren’t you there? Not like it’s punishment … it was just, ‘Hey … to play well, this is what is required.”
Love refers to these reminders as Lillard “planting seeds” which often come in the form of text messages after games.
“Me and Dame are getting closer and closer every day,” Love said. “He’s been such a help for me and such a shoulder to lean on.”
It’s quite the journey from the bleachers where Love picked Lillard’s brain in 2022, and it’s quite the coincidence that the journey now intersects with Lillard in the NBA. But Lillard won’t allow himself — or Love — to get too giddy about this story.
Why?
“Because I think it’s just beginning,” Lillard said. “He is the right type of kid. He has the game … and he’s just figuring it out. So, I think this is just the beginning.”
It may be the beginning for Love, but it’s not the end of Lillard’s mentorship. Lillard says he already has his next challenge primed for Love. It is short, to the point, and comes in the form of a question.
“What’s next?” Lillard asks. “You have to keep answering the call.”
By
Jason Quick
www.nytimes.com
