CLEVELAND -- Kevin Love will step back into Target Center as an opposing player for the first time on Saturday to face the Minnesota Timberwolves, but the thing is, he's been there before.

As a freshman at UCLA back in 2008, the Oregon native went up to Eugene, Oregon, with the Bruins to face the Ducks, and this wasn't just fans booing and making signs poking fun at him. This was death threats. This was homophobic chants. This was objects being hurled at Love's family.

"It was bad," Love told ESPN.com after scoring a game-high 23 points to go with 10 rebounds and three assists in the Cleveland Cavaliers' 101-90 win over Sacramento on Friday. "It was really bad. Nothing could rival that."

Now 26 years old with three All-Star appearances under his belt, an Olympic gold medal to his credit, and more than $40 million banked in NBA salary alone, he's a long way from that hostile gym in Oregon.

But that's not the type of thing you easily forget.

"I'll tell you why because my grandma, who passed away last year -- she was the easiest, nicest woman in the entire world, and my family and I had to explain it to her," Love said. "Like, what the deal was."

And how do you do that? How do you explain to a reasonable person the lengths that some folks will go to abuse the platform of sports fanaticism and turn it into something so negative, something so cruel.

"She was my biggest fan," Love continued. "But people were throwing stuff at my family and she didn't understand it. She was moved to tears about it.

"It was a very, very trying situation. At least for my family, because they had to sit there and try to watch the game and take the game in and be in attendance. I told them not to worry about it. As long as we won, it would be OK and we were fortunate enough to walk out of there with a win."

It's a win Love is still proud of despite the pro career he's gone on to carve out. He had 26 points on 8-for-11 shooting and 18 rebounds that day, and UCLA won 80-75.

He still remembers the names that comprised Oregon's team.

"They had [coach] Ernie Kent and guys that were very, very good college players -- Maarty Leunen, Bryce Taylor, Tajuan Porter, Malik Hairston," Love rattled off. "They had a number of good players on that team."

And he still remembers the faces in the stands.

"This is when Oregon basketball was like at its peak and that's a big part of the reason why there was a lot of the -- whatever you want to call it -- the people who hated me or disliked me," Love explained. "Even people who went to my high school. I remember looking in the crowd and thinking, 'Hey, I know you. I know you. I know you.' It was an eye-opening experience."

Sure, Love can feel a little bit better about his Minnesota return after breaking a 6-for-26 slump in his past two games with an efficient 9-for-17 game on Friday while leading the Cavs in scoring for the first time since LeBron James returned to the lineup following a two-week absence. But what really readied him was that game in Eugene. The experienced steeled him. And it prepared him for a trip to Minnesota some six years later that, in retrospect, can't nearly be as traumatic as what he's already been through.

"I'm thinking of Malcom Gladwell now: It's always worse when you're in it," Love said, paraphrasing a theme from "David and Goliath," Gladwell's recent book. "And then you look back and you think, 'OK, that's not so bad.' That's kind of how I think we look at most things. And from where I am mentally from where I was when I was 18-19 years old at the time, I've come a long way."

It helps that Love is in a great place right now. Minnesota fans can call him a coward for wanting to play with two other superstars in James and Kyrie Irving; he can just smile and think about how Cleveland's current nine-game win streak eclipses the total amount of wins the 8-38 Wolves have all season. They can bark at him about missing the All-Star Game; he can visualize the trip he has planned to visit family on the West Coast during the break. They can rip him for his drop in stats; he can know that he's right where he needs to be when he has James nearing triple-doubles nightly and Irving capable of exploding for 55 points in a game. Heck, they already tried to troll him with a video mocking his return, and he already shrugged that off in high-road fashion.

"I think if you look at the present, and there's no time like that, I think it's going phenomenal," Love said. "Obviously there have been ups and downs. Some of the adjustments have been tough, including my own, but I think as a team we're still finding a way, I'm still finding a way."

And he’s finding that in James, he has someone who certainly can relate to what he's about to go through, after James lived through one of the most toxic homecomings in sports history when he came to Cleveland on Dec. 2, 2010 for the first time as a member of the Miami Heat.

"I probably can help him more than anybody," James said. "Obviously it won't be the same as my experience, but I can give him some insight. I think the most important thing is he has to lean on us. That's what I did. I leaned on my teammates more than anything."

Love said reflecting on James' experience has already helped him.

"When LeBron came back here for the first time, I don't think anything can be as kind of stunning as that," Love said. "I can only imagine what the sound was like when his name was announced. So, I think it gave me perspective."

James, in four short years, turned the city of Cleveland back into his home and it welcomed him with open arms. A turnaround so dramatic may never be in store for Love, but James says he knows they still care about his teammate in Minnesota.

"When you go on the road and you're returning to the place where they once loved you ... They still love you, I know that, you only get booed because they love you," James said. "We will be there to pick him up and just play basketball. That's what I did. I just played basketball. My teammates allowed me to do that. My teammates helped me through it and it's 48 minutes, it's a couple hours, and then you can move on."

And basketball has been great to Love, all things considered.

"The thing I don't want to do is make it about myself," Love said. "I know there is going to be a lot of hoopla and talk about it, but the best thing we can do is keep playing winning basketball."