Too often we fall into the trap of thinking that because an NBA player gets to live the dream of being a professional athlete, their lives must be perfect. We also tend to like to rip apart those players who don't live up to OUR expectations of what their lives should be like.
The reality is that just like the rest of us, these guys suffer, struggle and sometimes fall apart. Money and fame can be great things, but they are also double-edged swords, as likely to cause harm as they are to give you a great life.
What affected me most about this story is that its so atypical of the athlete "mythology" we all buy into. Keyon Dooling's story is complicated, but it is also very human and real. Its not so much about the abuse that he suffered, but how he then forced himself to suffer for years more by holding it all inside and how it all blew up in an instant where he almost killed a man.
In short, this is a profile of a basketball player as a tragic and flawed, but ultimately redeemed individual whose journey does not allow us to judge him with the kinds of simple statements we see being thrown around about the various issues facing sports at the moment.
http://grantland.com/features/keyon-doo ... iami-heat/
Two excerpts:
Now, when Dooling looks back on those years, he sees how he tried to cope with the trauma of his past. He sees himself in fourth grade, sneaking to his father’s liquor cabinet, pouring himself strong drinks and sipping them until the world was gone. He sees himself in middle school, smoking weed with friends, letting the drug ease the anxiety he’d felt since that afternoon. He sees himself at that same age, flirting with girls and then taking them home. The more girls he slept with, he thought, the more he proved that he was no longer that little boy.
Basketball helped. On the court, he could assert his dominance. With the ball in his hands, he never felt like a victim. He loved the power his talent gave him, the confidence that grew from knowing that almost every kid in his school and his neighborhood could only dream of doing what he could do on a hardwood floor. The first time he dunked — as a freshman, in a game — he felt invincible. As he grew older, the memory of that afternoon faded, but the coping strategies remained.
...
But in the quiet of Dooling’s hotel room, the flashbacks returned. Not only of the abuse, but of other dark moments in Dooling’s life — the death of his father, his wife’s miscarriage, the gunshots he’d seen and heard as a teen. They invaded his thoughts, turned him paranoid. Every moment seemed filled with dread. He didn’t know how or why or when, but somehow, Dooling thought, soon he was going to die.
He tried to talk himself down. He told himself that his problems were spiritual, that he was being punished for his past sins. If he could get right with God, then he could make this all go away. Dooling had always considered himself a Christian, but as an adult, his devotion waned: He prayed less; he chose immediate pleasures even when he believed they were wrong. So now, alone in his hotel room, Dooling called out to God. He begged: for forgiveness, for relief, for anything that would restore his peace of mind and undo whatever that man in Seattle had done.