The NBA is on the threshold of its darkest hour. Later today, players must accept a variable revenue-sharing plan that would see them get between 49% and 51% of basketball-related income or have that offer downgraded to 47% by day's end, probably followed by another round of game cancellations. The National Basketball Players Association has threatened to decertify, and that would in all likelihood be the death knell for the season we never knew. Inside reports suggest that some owners don't care if this happens and, even worse, many fans don't, either.
Nobody is talking about the NBA in any positive way. These negotiations are drawing the same mild curiosity that compels us to look at the multi-car wreck on the side of the road into work, but in the end, we pass it and are thankful it doesn't affect us. That's how it is with pro basketball. It is football or hockey or even the NASCAR Chase For the Sprint Cup that most affects us. We are less preoccupied with the hometown NBA team than with getting an early start to our Christmas shopping. The air is so thick with acrimony it's hard to imagine anything regenerative being carried on its winds. And with fans this apathetic, who would be receptive even if there was?
Well, something is. The story of ex-NBA guard Chris Herren first appeared as a blinking light on the fringes of our radar last spring with the release of Basketball Junkie (St. Martin's Press, 275 pages), Bill Reynolds' outstanding chronicle of Herren's lifelong battle with various addictions that took him from depths most of us never reach — he was clinically dead for 30 seconds — to eventual sobriety. Now, with ESPN Films' airing of Unguarded last week, people are perking to his evangelical tale. In communities around his New England home town, they are coming to high school auditoriums and book signings and enrolling their children in his Hoop Dreams programs to find inspiration from his victory.
Two decades after Charles Barkley told fans he was not their role model, Herren has stepped up to the part.
My first impression of Herren was not positive. During his senior year at nearby Durfee High School, he played in a Christmas tournament hosted by my alma mater. The crowd was non-partisan, except when it came to Herren. Some loved him, most hated him, but all were riveted to him. In the closing minutes of the championship game, he spent a timeout searching out the catcalls rather than listening to his coach. Durfee lost, but he made the all-tournament team. He tossed his trophy into the trash on the way out of the gym.
First impressions can be hard to change, and I'm not sure when mine was recast. Living in the same community, word reached me about Herren's substance abuse problems well before the touching press conference at Fresno State in which he announced his departure from Jerry Tarkanian's program. He had a problem, he manned up, and he was going to deal with it. Despite our petty jealousies, we all retain some capacity for compassion to those who seek it. Soon enough, this kid that everyone loved to root against now needed some rooting for. But no one knew the extent of his issues.
In 2004 came news of his arrest after passing out in a Dunkin' Donuts drive-thru that I've taken my own family through on many occasions. There were 18 empty heroin packets next to him. It was eight in the morning. I'm all for a good comeback story, but this guy was beginning to try me. So, when Basketball Junkie came out, I picked it up like so many others, curious to see how a kid with so much talent and opportunity could throw it all away by succumbing to the lures of fame.
Within pages, it hit me: he did not succumb to fame. He achieved it in spite of an innate and crippling addictive personality that began to surface with his first swig of Cold Duck champagne at the age of 12, long before the bright lights of the Boston Garden were anything more than the same schoolboy fantasy we all had at the age of 12. From then on, his life became a personal hell, and reading his account is enough to make you weep for all he could have had but lost. He was a Celtic for an entire season, and how many kids dream of playing for their favorite NBA team?
Today, despite a professional basketball career that saw him play around the world, despite beating addictions on multiple fronts, any of which could have destroyed another man, his is a humble and unassuming manner that belies all he has achieved. In the distinctive Massachusetts accent he has retained since childhood, he regales audiences from adolescent to elder of his addictions and the support system he used to beat them. And as they were in that basketball gym during Christmas of his senior year of high school, everyone is riveted to Herren. You simply do not want to miss a word he says.
ESPN Films captures this in Unguarded. Over a cleverly arranged sequence of clips from at least three different appearances, Herren delivers a homogenous message in a conversational, down-to-earth style that compels his audience to listen, and even brings one woman to tears. Throughout the film, director Jonathan Hock grounds viewers with flashbacks to his playing days — largely at Fresno State and with the Denver Nuggets and Boston Celtics — so as to continuously remind us of how good he was, how great he could have been. You then feel the full price exacted by his addictions, and realize the inner strength he has when he can tell listeners that he doesn't regret a single minute because it made him the husband, father, brother he is today.
When was the last time an ambassador of the NBA brought you to tears for all the right reasons?
A former player standing forth as a pillar of society seems so un-NBA in these uncertain times, but his triumph gives me hope that there can be more silver linings to come as the league endures the most challenging threat to its legitimacy and looks to reengineer itself for a new generation. One thing is clear to me: for it to succeed, the NBA has got to find more Chris Herrens.
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