I liked Kevin Love from the moment I saw him. A big lumpy kid who couldn’t be as good as everyone said he was … but was.

As I mentioned just a few days ago, I saw a lot of the Bruins during that stretch of three-straight Final Fours … and Kevin Love played for two of those teams.

And why am I writing about him now? Because he forced me to.

Two words: “30” and “30.”

Kevin Love tonight became the first NBA player since Moses Malone in 1982 to score 30 points and take 30 rebounds in the same game.

The first since Moses Malone … in 1982.

I knew I loved Kevin Love.

He actually went for 31 and 31 at the Timberwolves rallied to win at home against the New York Knicks.

Actually, the big surprise is the 31 points, also a career high, because he has a career scoring average of 12.7 points per game. When he was at UCLA he was really, really good, but you had to wonder how a guy who is maybe 6-foot-9 and not exactly chiseled, and not a great jumper, was going to score in The League.

Well, turns out he can hit the occasional three, and he hits the offensive boards well enough (and O-boards are all about effort) that he gets some putbacks … and he just seems to want the ball more than people around him, which is a characteristic shared by all great rebounders.

Now, Kurt Rambis has to figure out how to get Love more minutes. This guy is coming on fast — he had 23 points and 24 rebounds against the Lakers a few games ago, but Rambis played him only 28 minutes in the next game.

Anyway, have I mentioned this before? Those UCLA teams that made three consecutive Final Fours … those guys were really good individual players. And for the longest time I thought Ben Howland had just coached the heck out of solid college guys.

But he had some tools. And several of them went directly to the NBA.

From the 2005-06 team: Jordan Farmar

From the 2006-07 team: Arron Afflalo.

From the 2007-08 team: Kevin Love,  Russell Westbrook and Luc Richard Mbah a Moute.

And from the 2008-09 team: Darren Collison and Jrue Holiday.

And many of those guys had some overlap. Collison played for all four teams, Mbah a Moute for three, Westbrook and Afflalo for two.

And all seven of those guys have been starters in the NBA. Six of them start right this minute — Afflalo in Denver, Collison in Indiana, Westbook in Oklahoma City, Holiday in Philadelphia, Mbah a Moute in Milwaukee (maybe the biggest surprise of all) and Love in Minnesota. Farmar has been a key reserve for three-plus seasons.

That’s a lot of success from a really compressed period of time. And perhaps, in retrospect, UCLA had so many good players, and so many well-coached players, that they all made each other look a bit ordinary.

Anyway, it turns out that those guys were really good. The NBA could tell you.

Love could be the best of all. He already was known as the best outlet passer on the planet. He was known for rebounding. And now he is scoring?

I wish we could have seen all of those guys play four seasons for the Bruins — Collison was the only one who did.  They might have won a title or two, and not just gotten close.

Luckily, we can see them in the NBA … probably for a long time.