It's because he white.
I hate to say it, but this is really the only reason. It's not that people are directly racist, but most people are inherently more sympathetic towards people they feel they relate with or are similar to. Kevin Love is the nephew of a Beach Boy. It does not get any more American apple pie than that.
Love signed a huge contract after his rookie deal expired and started complaining that year about his team. Then got injured, and continued to complain about his team. I remember thinking at that time, that he was already not the best guy to lead your team. Now you throw in the fact that he bailed on Team USA (though I get reasons behind) and people are still willing to give him a pass that someone like Lebron, Dwight, or any other star that was not white would not get.
Grantland wrote a great article several years ago about this as it relates to why America has not embraced the Williams sisters in Tennis.
http://grantland.com/features/serena-williams-conqueror/
I don't mean to be overly critical, but to compare tennis with NBA basketball in asinine!!! 76.3% of NBA players are black. 81% are players of color. The NBA actually grades out quite well overall on this gender and race report card!!!
http://www.tidesport.org/RGRC/2013/2013_NBA_RGRC.pdf
What percentage of top level female tennis players are black or women of color? It is very low.
Therefore, to compare these two sports is a very poor analogy. Perhaps one of the worst imaginable. We expect to see many African-American players and stars in the NBA, as that is the NORM. Most do not expect African-American women to be successful at tennis, until the Williams' sisters tore down those walls!!! Kudos to them for that.
If you want to read one of the best articles on Richard Williams and how he grew up and why is was never understood by the tennis world (and perhaps why Venus and Serena were not as accepted as they deserved), please read this piece:
http://espn.go.com/magazine/friend_20010530.html
Smitty77
I actually want to back it up for a second.
Do people think Venus and Serena weren't accepted and embraced? To me, they seemed like the Tiger Woods of women's tennis.
Like when Tiger first hit the scene, this black dude playing golf, he was definitely embraced, people started watching golf on tv just to see Tiger, and everybody was cheering for him.
That's what I saw with the Williams sisters too, everybody embraced them. People were tuning into tennis just to watch them and cheer for them. Like in the article, it talks about how people booed Serena at Indian Wells, that was because everybody wanted to see Serena and Venus play each other! To me, that shows the people liked them, not that they didn't like them. It's like booing when the band you paid to see comes out 3 hours late, plays for 10 minutes then leaves. You like the band, but you feel robbed and cheated.
Maybe some of you had a different experiences than me, but I've never seen anything but love for the Williams sisters. If you walked the streets of suburban America and polled people asking them to name 3 female tennis players, most of the answers would go "Venus and Serena and umm..."
But anyway, I fail to see any connection between that article and the Kevin Love situation.