May 1, 2024 • 43 mins
In this special bonus episode of NBA DNA, Hannah sits down with NBA veteran, University of Kentucky legend, podcast host, and social media influencer Rex Chapman. Rex and Hannah talk about his first year in the league, his struggles with depression and substance abuse, his journey to self-acceptance, and his second act as a social media star.
Like Rex’s interview? Check out his memoir “It’s Hard for Me to Live With Me,” and listen to his podcast Owned, on the iHeart Radio app, or wherever you get your podcasts.
See omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.
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Episode Transcript
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Speaker 1 (00:05):
We're doing something a little different on NBA DNA this
week in revisiting the early days of the Charlotte Hornets.
I had a chance to speak with Rex Chapman for
our last episode, and his story is so compelling and
inspiring that we decided to share it. Here are Kentucky.
(00:29):
Chapman is one of the greatest players to emerge from
the basketball crazed state of Kentucky. At Apollo High School
in Owensboro, Rex was named Mister Basketball, also Gatorade Player
of the Year, Associated Press Player of the Year, and
a McDonald's All American. He went on to have two
(00:49):
remarkable seasons at the University of Kentucky, earning him the
nickname King Rex, before being selected eighth overall in the
nineteen eighty eight draft by the expansion Charlotte Hornets.
Speaker 2 (01:01):
Might be looking for somebody to give it, don to
give to Chapin night Well slammed up.
Speaker 3 (01:06):
That's a great play.
Speaker 2 (01:07):
I didn't think that six moore guide.
Speaker 1 (01:09):
Rex would go on to spend twelve years in the
league playing for the Washington Bullets, Miami Heat, and Phoenix Suns.
After Charlotte thought.
Speaker 2 (01:17):
It comes to chavel almost overthrown javelon shot it.
Speaker 1 (01:27):
Rex's pro basketball career included some spectacular moments, but was
marked by injury and struggles with depression and anxiety. Later,
he suffered from a gambling and opioid addiction. In late
twenty fourteen, Rex entered rehab and has worked since then
to rebuild his life, reach out to others, and be
(01:50):
a resource for the next generation of players. Today, almost
twenty five years after playing in his final game, Rex
is best known as a social media star, and he's
a New York Times best selling author. In February, he
released It's Hard for Me to Live with Me, a memoir.
(02:11):
It seems like yesterday that I first met the young
star with a thousand watt smile that hid those struggles,
And I'm grateful today to Rex for allowing me to
help share his story of perseverance. It is so good
(02:45):
to see you, Rack, you too, You too, Gosh. We
go for people who may not know you, and I
go way, way, way, way way back to your rookie
season and the inaugural season of the Charlotte Hornets. Man,
do you remember me at the time I met I
have obviously remember you, but you know you talk to
a lot of reporters and stuff. Back then, I was
like a local reporter, weekend anchor. We have a very
(03:06):
young wretch chat and coming in you pin some hopes
on a very young Teito whrror for both of.
Speaker 3 (03:11):
Them with just well, yeah, So what's weird about that
is that I came there and was the youngest player
in the league and I felt twelve inside, and everybody
on the team was much older than I was too,
And so I'm having to go and do these meetings,
you know, like you worked for who at the time.
Speaker 1 (03:31):
I worked for WPCQ Channel thirty six.
Speaker 2 (03:34):
Okay, so I'm doing all these going around.
Speaker 3 (03:36):
I've got this deal and that deal that I'm doing,
you know, endorsements and stuff, and like your station, I
think asked me to come over. I go over to
the station. It's a meeting that you're in. So I'm
nineteen or twenty and I'm sitting there and I'm thinking,
she's really cute thinking about you, And so I thought, though,
(03:56):
she's not done with college, So how someone my age
have this job?
Speaker 2 (04:01):
Because I was like, you know, maybe I'll ask her
to go out.
Speaker 3 (04:05):
And so after a month, I guess I asked someone
who knew how old you were, and they said, she's
twenty five, and I went, she's a woman. That's too old,
and how because you know, you look my age. But
when I found I was so intimidated. I thought, oh, no,
(04:26):
she's not a girl, she's a woman. Like that's off limits.
Speaker 1 (04:31):
That is hilarious. I am so happy to hear that now,
Oh my gosh. And of course everybody in Charlotte did
want to go out with you. You had that nickname
sexy Rexy. Yeah, what do you remember about that?
Speaker 3 (04:48):
It was just very weird, you know, and I was single,
and the Hornets were having me do auctions where I'd
be auctioned off and have to go on a date
with random people in the community, you know, thirty thirty
five year old women.
Speaker 2 (05:06):
I'm a child.
Speaker 3 (05:07):
I felt like a kid, you know, I'm twenty one,
twenty years old, and they're they're having me do this stuff,
and it just felt really weird.
Speaker 2 (05:15):
I felt like an alien.
Speaker 1 (05:16):
Yeah, I bet, because here you are. You would come
out of college after your sophomore year, so you you
hadn't even been to four years of college, right, And.
Speaker 2 (05:25):
I didn't get much done while I was there on court.
Speaker 1 (05:30):
You did on Yeah. Yeah, and then you go into
this situation. It's not like you just went into any
old team. You went into a crazed situation with this
new expansion team in North Carolina, which is as you know,
it's like Kentucky. I mean, people are just insane about
their basketball.
Speaker 2 (05:50):
The Charlotte Hornets select Rex Chapman of Kentucky.
Speaker 1 (05:57):
Coming out of the University of Kentucky after his sophomore
year wrecked chat and then you were the guy. It
was all veterans, right, that had come there in the
expansion draft, right, so they were older, some of them
had kids already. Yeah, you were still a kid.
Speaker 2 (06:15):
Yeah, but you were the.
Speaker 1 (06:17):
Face of the franchise.
Speaker 3 (06:18):
That's a lot, right, Yeah, you know when you say
it like that, Yes, I guess. However, I played at
Kentucky and those crowds very similar to the ones in Charlotte,
and you know, twenty four thousand people in Lexington and
there's nineteen or twenty in Charlotte. But the way they
(06:41):
loved us and you know, we're rabbid, was very much
the same.
Speaker 1 (06:49):
Crowd.
Speaker 3 (06:53):
I was fortunate that I was good enough to play
and be a good player that that wasn't my worry.
Speaker 2 (06:58):
I didn't have an issue with all of that. It
was just I felt like a kid.
Speaker 3 (07:02):
Thank God for Muggsy Bogues and Del Curry, who you
know are still two of my best friends. You know,
Stephan was born my rookie year, so I used to
babysit Steph and all that. Thank goodness for those guys.
You know, Dell taught me how to tie a tie stuff.
Speaker 2 (07:18):
Like really, yeah, yeah, I just felt much like a kid.
Speaker 3 (07:22):
Tom Tolbert was another rookie, but Tom was two three
years older than I was. He graduated from U of A.
That was the other thing that was hard was that
that was an era where I mean, most guys were
college graduates and I was not. And I think, I
don't know, I felt inferior kind of a bit. And uh,
(07:45):
you know, unless you were Magic or Isaiah. He didn't
leave school early.
Speaker 2 (07:50):
Chapman's guided.
Speaker 1 (07:51):
My magic was around magic underneath reverse.
Speaker 3 (07:55):
And I ended up in Charlotte, which was an expansion team, and.
Speaker 2 (07:58):
We were terrible. We were bearable. We were bad.
Speaker 3 (08:01):
We won nineteen games our first year and maybe twenty
the next, but we won attendance records every year. You know,
they hung the banners for the attendance in Charlotte.
Speaker 1 (08:15):
I talked to A Dell about this and he said,
you know, at the time, because Cleveland said, we're going
to keep Craig Elow because we think he can guard
Michael Jordan better. How ironic is that? You know? They
let him go right and the host Cleveland in the
first game, obviously he's injured. I think the Portus lost
by like forty points. But he said the fact that
(08:36):
the crowd gave a standing ovation afterwards, they're all there
in tuxes and gowns right that opening night, in some
ways that that seemed like surreal.
Speaker 2 (08:45):
Charlotte pomis it is the largest arena now in the NBA,
three thousands yees.
Speaker 3 (08:51):
To be completely honest, at the time, we were a
little embarrassed by it, because you got to remember, we're
going out there and we're playing, and yes, I know
the fans love it and all that. You get judged
by winning and losing in our profession, and so it's
almost like negative feedback because we're going to play, be
(09:12):
in every game for three three and a half quarters
until the other team decides to start playing harder and
gets all the calls and we lose.
Speaker 2 (09:19):
Eighty one fifty Doherty against Kempton, but that they loved
it that much. It was kind of confusing, But it
was a little embarrassing, you know, because we felt like
the other teams were like, they're getting ready to get
smacked in front of all these people.
Speaker 1 (09:35):
What do you learn from a situation like that? I mean,
Delle said, you know, he did learn about losing, you know,
and about surviving that and moving forward. What about you?
Speaker 3 (09:48):
No question about it. It's hard being a number one
or number two option scorer. I was really probably a
two or a three at best. But for stretch in Charlotte,
you know, I'm being guarded by Michael and Michael Cooper
and all the lockdown guys, and you find out very
(10:08):
quickly kind of where you are being able to fight
through that. A missed all the losing. I remember Ricky
Green pulled me aside one of our teammates, older teammates,
and I was really down about the losing, and he
pulled me aside and said, hey, Rex Listen Dell might
have been there too, said you two, we're going to
get beat three out of four nights.
Speaker 2 (10:27):
That's just the way it is. You guys are going
to play a long time, but you need to get
your shots up. Fifteen shots a game. You guys get
them up no matter what.
Speaker 3 (10:37):
And as a pro, you know, you're raised everything as
team and I'm coming from college where like that's not
something that you think about.
Speaker 2 (10:47):
And it was really good advice. I wasn't ready to
do that. Really, Dell probably wasn't either. You know.
Speaker 3 (10:55):
The other funny part about you said they traded him
because they thought Craig Elo could guard Mychael Jordan better.
Speaker 2 (11:01):
Nobody could guard Michael Jordan better.
Speaker 3 (11:03):
And when I say that, you know, the Hornets drafted
me to match up with Michael Jordan and stop him
in the East playing for Chicago. If you forward and
see how that went, Michael ended up owning the team
I was playing for.
Speaker 1 (11:20):
He owned him when he played, and then he bought
him leader.
Speaker 2 (11:25):
Jordan on the drive all the way from the time.
Speaker 1 (11:30):
Oh my gosh, what was it like? I mean, if
you're drafted with that kind of expectation and playing a
guy who well, obviously it was just a couple of
years after you started in the league and they started
winning their you know, first of their run of six
championships in eight years. What was it like going up
against him?
Speaker 3 (11:46):
Yeah, you know, I'd never been on the court, and
I'd played against Michael in the summer after being drafted.
Speaker 2 (11:52):
We played together and whatnot, And.
Speaker 3 (11:54):
Until that point, I had never really been on the
court with someone that I I kind of had to
admit was better than I was.
Speaker 2 (12:03):
Michael makes it look so easy so much of the time,
and I guess.
Speaker 3 (12:06):
For him and a his hands are so big, I
mean so big. If a ball comes off the rim
and ten guys are going for it, nine guys are
going for it with two hands as it goes towards
the corner. When you have hands so big that you
can reach out with one hand and grab it and
be gone, you're playing a different game. If he got
(12:26):
two feet in the paint, he's dunking it. He was
just different. And you know, it was fun, fun playing
against him.
Speaker 1 (12:35):
It was fun playing him. So it wasn't frustrating, it
wasn't intimidating. It was just you love the challenge it
and you could get him rush Chatman over Jordan for
three and I got it.
Speaker 3 (12:48):
You know, there are times you get him, he gets you.
He got me more than I got him. But I
was hurt a lot, and there were games when I
would miss playing against him. That just drove me insane.
And you got to remember, at the time, he's not
the greatest player in the world. He was on his way,
and at the time when I came in, he couldn't
(13:10):
really shoot yet. So for two or three years I
just backed off of him. Didn't really matter because he
was so crazy athletic and bouncy and quick and competitive.
Once he got where he could shoot, it it was
a rap, you know. And that he got where he
could shoot it is amazing. Shut It's just amazing. I
(13:38):
wasn't a great shooter. I was able to make clutch
shots and I could get my shot off and everything.
But also I'd never shot open shots before. I'd never
had open shots before. I'd always been the best player
on my team. And now Dell's a better shooter than me,
and Kelly Trapuka and Robert Reid and those guys.
Speaker 2 (13:53):
Are better shooters. Now I have to start making open shots,
and it was harder.
Speaker 1 (14:10):
You know, you mentioned Dell current.
Speaker 2 (14:14):
Shot.
Speaker 1 (14:14):
He's such a great person and obviously an incredible father,
and you look what his sons have been able to accomplish.
He's been rejected by the calves. Essentially, he lands here
and along you come, this young kid. Yeah, if you
got to speak to I don't know how he took
you under his wing or how he mentored you. Yeah,
because you obviously it was essential that you have somebody
(14:37):
like that. You were going to survive otherwise.
Speaker 2 (14:39):
I wasn't and I was young. All the friends I
knew were still in college. And when I.
Speaker 3 (14:44):
Got to Charlotte, I'd never lived a day in my
life without a roommate or been at my parents' house.
Speaker 2 (14:49):
So I got there and back.
Speaker 3 (14:51):
The first night, I was actually scared to go upstairs
because it was dark upstairs. I was a lottery pick
and I'm going to practice the next day. And I
went down and slept on the cow. I went out
this the next day, got over it that night, thought, Okay,
I'm this is dumb.
Speaker 2 (15:05):
I got over it that night. But I was that young.
Speaker 3 (15:08):
When I pulled into my subdivision, I hadn't even seen
my apartment.
Speaker 2 (15:12):
Someone said it, uh, there was furniture in there.
Speaker 3 (15:15):
And I pulled up and Dell had his He was
standing there like two doors down. He's sonya and Stephan.
She I mean, he was months old and he was hurt.
He'd broken his wrist.
Speaker 2 (15:28):
And from that day, like I didn't know how to
do laundry, Sonya did my laundry. They took care of
me and when they wanted to go out on a
date or whatever. I'd watched Stephan.
Speaker 3 (15:39):
I couldn't believe I had a friend that had a baby,
you know, and watching him grow up for the first
two or three years was amazing. But you know, to
the point, I think Dell would have had every reason.
He had already played in Utah and Cleveland, and he was,
you know, a mid first round picking low.
Speaker 2 (15:57):
For cutters along the baseline, left corner Shot Curry, Yes,
Sir Del Curry, drill.
Speaker 3 (16:02):
Now they drafted, you know, a two guard and the
college draft me. And so he helped me so much.
Like he could have been standoffish, they could have been. Honestly,
he's one of my best buddies. But he was like
a father figure to me. And in fact, Muggsy, Dell
and I were eating breakfast in Los Angeles. Dell's dad
(16:25):
was fifty eight years old at the time, and you know,
he came to a lot of our games, and they
talked before every single game, every game. This is like
before cell phones and stuff, right around that time, and
we're with Dell and Los Angeles. We just had shoot around,
I think, and we're in his room and Dell got
a phone call and his.
Speaker 2 (16:44):
Dad had died. Oh he was destroyed. We were destroyed.
Speaker 3 (16:49):
And I think us being young and things like those
things happening just sort of bonded us forever. I could
call that dude with anything right now and he would
pick up. He knows he could do the same with me.
He mugsy the same. We weren't very good those teams,
and some of the people on those teams that I
still have relationships with thirty years later, thirty five years later,
(17:12):
I'm so grateful, so thankful they do have a time out,
decide not to use a curry waiting.
Speaker 2 (17:23):
A little shit from.
Speaker 1 (17:24):
Curry was a little stuff, a well behaved child. I
think you're the only person I've talked to besides Dell
that knewhim when he was a tiny kid. What was
he like as a little guy. He's such a great
human being.
Speaker 3 (17:39):
I mean he is, and the fun you know, because
he's the first little baby i've been around, I've been
around little kids. But then I remember coming back to
the summer after the first year and he's talking. He's
calling Dell daddy, and I thought, this is hilarious. I've
got a friend who has a kid that calls him daddy.
Daddy is what I call Dell in my phone, what
(18:00):
I call him to.
Speaker 2 (18:01):
This day because of that.
Speaker 1 (18:02):
That's funny.
Speaker 3 (18:03):
What's fun about Stephan is every time I see him
or talk to him at a ball game or where
of it, it is, the very first moment is a
little smile, kind of a you know, and I don't
even know what we're smiling about. It's probably me playing
little games with him when he was a kid, and
those are kind of hardwired memories. I remember being in
(18:24):
the car coming home from a like an exhibition game
in Greenville, South Carolina, Me Del Muggsy and Stephan, and
I've said before, you know, I'm sure at the time
we thought we were big shit basketball players and the
best player in the car was in a baby seat
the whole time, but so true. Yeah, And Stephan was
(18:45):
just balling, crying, and Dale finally was like, take him
out of there.
Speaker 2 (18:49):
See, you know, if you can get him. I put
him on my chest.
Speaker 3 (18:52):
He went out like that, and I just remember feeling
his heart beating on mine and like right and close
to that moment, I.
Speaker 2 (18:58):
Was like, oh, I've got to be a dad's day.
Like he just went to sleep. So cool.
Speaker 1 (19:03):
Yeah, that's so cool. It was such a crazy year.
A couple of things were really unusual about the Hornets
back in the day. The uniforms.
Speaker 2 (19:16):
Alexander Julian, yes.
Speaker 1 (19:18):
Exactly, that teal and purple colorway, the big B and
most importantly.
Speaker 2 (19:23):
The sleets.
Speaker 3 (19:25):
I hated those uniforms and they're sort of iconic uniforms
now people, you know, for whatever reason.
Speaker 2 (19:32):
The jerseys are anyway, we hated them. We were embarrassed
by them, you know, fleets and the shorts. Also, it
was a brand new team in some ways, like I
knew the Sixers and the Celtics and the Lakers, and
what's the Hornets? What are the heat? What is this?
Speaker 3 (19:50):
And so in some ways it almost felt like we
weren't part of the NBA.
Speaker 1 (19:55):
I remember the Raptors. They were named because it was
like Jurassic Park was such a hot thing. Kids were
into dinosaurs and so okay, let's name the team the
Raptors and make it a cute dinosaur wolves.
Speaker 2 (20:06):
Yeah, what are we doing? The Orlando Magic?
Speaker 1 (20:10):
I know, I know that's so funny. You were a
knockdown shooter, but I'm not sure that fans remember you're
dunking acumen.
Speaker 2 (20:21):
Yeah.
Speaker 1 (20:22):
Yeah, I competed in the what was it in nineteen
ninety right as a Hornet? You came in six competed
in ninety one.
Speaker 3 (20:29):
Yeah, they made me do it, Hannah. I didn't really
want to do it. If I went to the All
Star Game. I wanted it to be as a player, okay,
and we're playing on really bad teams in Charlotte, and
you know, none of us are going to be All Stars,
none of us are good enough to be All Stars,
and so I just felt like it was a gimmick,
And so I didn't do it my first year, and
(20:50):
I was asked for ten years to do it.
Speaker 2 (20:53):
Cham toss us to himself for the two handed reverse jam.
You know, Bob, I didn't do it the first year.
Speaker 3 (21:00):
The next year it was in Miami the second year,
and the league and the Hornets basically made me do
it because I didn't do it my first year. The
next year it was in Charlotte, and I did not
want to do it again, felt obligated to do it,
and did it that year, and then you know, I
got traded shortly after, and I was determined the next
(21:21):
time I went, I was going to be an All
Star and I was voted in, and then I got
hurt and all that stuff. I just was not going
to go back as a gimmick in the dunk contest.
Speaker 2 (21:31):
First dunk Dominique Wilkins.
Speaker 1 (21:36):
You see, Dominique has such great burn.
Speaker 2 (21:38):
It was fun, you know, losing a dunk contest to
Dominique Wilkins. Not many people could say that.
Speaker 1 (21:43):
Yeah, if you're gonna lose, loose to the Human Highlights film,
you know what I mean, if you're gonna lose, lose
to a good one, right, you know. But it is
really interesting hearing you say that you were kind of
made to do something that you really didn't want to do.
It's kind of hard to imagine that today's era, right,
it seems like players are empowered a lot more than
(22:04):
they were back in the day. I think, so, do
you think so?
Speaker 2 (22:07):
Yes, you know, I think that's a good thing.
Speaker 3 (22:10):
Yeah, we talked about Michael Jordan takes a lot of
shit for not being more political. We came up in
an era where you wouldn't have a job, and Michael
probably was the only one of us that could really
afford to take a difficult political stance or have a
political stance of any kind.
Speaker 2 (22:32):
You know, that wasn't the world we lived in. He
did the best he could. You know, I think that
the players being a little more empowered today is a
good thing. You know. There's a lot of stuff that.
Speaker 3 (22:43):
You know, kind of went on, but I know you
know this, So from about age sixteen or seventeen to
twenty three or so, I had a black girlfriend, and
from a very young age, all through high school and
through Kentucky, I was sort of told to not do
that by different people, you know, institutional racism basically, and
(23:04):
I was really upset and angry about it.
Speaker 2 (23:08):
I didn't really realize it.
Speaker 3 (23:10):
Then I got to Charlotte and they were offering six
hundred and fifty thousand, which sounded like six hundred and fifty.
Speaker 2 (23:16):
Billion dollars to me.
Speaker 3 (23:18):
Sure with fortune and David Falk, my agent, wanted me
to hold out to get another twenty.
Speaker 2 (23:24):
Five thousand dollars.
Speaker 3 (23:25):
So I'm holding out for a week, and finally George
schen and Stupen and Spencer stop and CEO maybe. They
asked David and I to meet at his house, and
Spencer and David stay upstairs, and George takes me downstairs
and we're talking, chit chatting, and he said, do you
(23:46):
have a black girlfriend? And I said, uh what? He
asked me again, and we were broken up at the time.
I said, no, I don't, but if I did, and
that makes me a bad guy, then I guess I'll
just be a bad guy. That was the first time
I had ever stood up for myself really at all
on the topic.
Speaker 2 (24:05):
And I was nineteen two.
Speaker 1 (24:07):
What did he say when you said that?
Speaker 2 (24:09):
He said, no, no, no, no, no, I don't care.
Speaker 3 (24:13):
But other people, he said, other people, And then he
used the term that I'd never heard before. He said, no, no,
I'm just saying be careful because you know, we live
in the Bible Belt and I'd never heard that, but
I knew what it meant, and I just was so disheartened.
We went upstairs and the deal was done, just like that.
(24:36):
He gave the rest of the contract and really, yeah,
so it was just it was a hell of a
way to start off after I'd kind of just been
through it in college.
Speaker 1 (24:45):
Nobody talked about no and I up front. Then nobody
would be public about it. They would just like you said,
it would manifest itself in institutional racism.
Speaker 2 (24:55):
Yeah, in so many other ways. Was the real confusing
part of it for me too, is that On is
the girl. We're still very good friends. Her brother Mark
were from the same hometown. Her brother Mark and other
brother Kenny Kenny was a professional basketball player played in
the NBA. Her brother Mark played in the NFL. He
played for the Dolphins. He was the best running back
at UK and Sean had won the hundred in high
(25:18):
school twice in a row.
Speaker 3 (25:20):
Great athletic family. I'm being discouraged from dating her. Mark
and I are doing all the photo shoots at the
school together. Had she been white, people have wanted us
to get married and have a bazillion kids right away.
Speaker 1 (25:36):
Yeah, a parade for you.
Speaker 2 (25:38):
Yeah.
Speaker 3 (25:38):
There were times when I was told, you know, do
that be careful or go out at night that I
wanted to say, all right, let's go talk about this
in front of the team, you know, because I'm the
only white guy on the team.
Speaker 2 (25:50):
For the most part, and all my teammates are black.
And let's see how this goes down when you guys
say this in the locker room. To me, I didn't
have the gut. I didn't have the knowledge to say
this is you guys are wrong. I just didn't and
I lived with it.
Speaker 1 (26:10):
That's really that's a lot. Charlotte, you know, was a
very conservative town. And I even remember, you know, wearing
like a really nice suit that i'd gotten at like
the local belk or something, you know, at the time
getting hate mail at the station. You know, you should
not stand up on the court. Your skirt is too short,
(26:32):
you should not be covering basketball, You're distracting people, You're inappropriate,
You're you know, I mean, just.
Speaker 2 (26:39):
This makes a furnish to me. That's probably why I
thought you were always buttoned up. You were. Yeah, that
was another reason I probably thought, you know, look, she
is older, mature, she's but you were doing the same
thing I was doing. You were pretending to be a
grown up. Yeah. Yeah, well I.
Speaker 1 (26:57):
Think that, you know, when you're a young person and
you're finding yourself, or really at any age, because everyone
deserves to see who they want to to do. What
kind of job they want to to be who they are,
you know, but you get into a situation where even
if it's a few voices that are you know, bigoted, ignorant,
(27:19):
what have you, Even if it's a few when you're
a young person, that could really cut deep. You know,
I'm not equaiting our situation anyway, there's completely you know,
what you went through was terrible.
Speaker 2 (27:32):
No, I get it, but.
Speaker 1 (27:33):
You know what I'm saying, Like, I think when you're young,
and you were really young, you know, to kind of
have people speak to you that way.
Speaker 2 (27:39):
That was just confusing, very you know, and in the
midst of a negotiation too. Yeah, you know what I mean.
Speaker 3 (27:46):
Honestly, at that point, I still feel like, you know,
my parents should be around me when I have conversations
like this, Like, yeah, I felt like a kid, a
real child.
Speaker 1 (28:08):
Do you know that your dad and my dad actually intersected.
It's so crazy, I do. So your dad was playing
for the Kentucky Colonels when my dad.
Speaker 3 (28:18):
Was there, Okay, And this is why, Like it was
confusing to me because when he told me that, I
was like, wait, that's not her name her name or exactly,
and he said, yeah, and he gave an answer that
I didn't really understand, but it did convince me that
he was your dad.
Speaker 2 (28:36):
Yeah, how wild is that?
Speaker 1 (28:38):
That's crazy. I actually had to cross reference it because
I'm like, okay, so I knew your dad played for
the Colonels and the Pacers, so we played for a
couple of ABA teams. Obviously my dad was with the
Colonels and the Pacers. So I was like putting like
the years together, Like, yeah, they definitely cross paths.
Speaker 2 (28:53):
Yeah, in Louisville they did.
Speaker 1 (28:55):
Yeah, that's so crazy to you. I mean, you are
obviously little, but when you were remember about sort of
your dad those days.
Speaker 3 (29:03):
You know, I don't remember a whole lot because I
was little, but I would guess he was probably finished
playing by the time I was four or five. But
I remember being at a few games and I would
see the red, white, and blue balls over there on
the rack, and like, if I could have just had
anything in the world, it would be that ball rack,
(29:24):
and I would go over and I'd grab a ball.
From time to time, without my mom knowing, I'd run
out there and i'd shoot a basket and I would
hear people cheer.
Speaker 2 (29:34):
Really yeah, and from a very young age. I probably
did more damage than good. I bed off of feedback
like that, so that I always wanted to be a
basketball player, didn't ever want to be anything else, had
no other dreams or aspirations. That's not a really good
way to go through life, very healthy way to go
(29:56):
through life.
Speaker 1 (29:56):
But you don't think so, though, because I think not
knowing what you want to do is also I mean,
you had a goal, I had something that you worked towards,
and it's okay to love it is.
Speaker 2 (30:07):
But I know I'm not saying that. Okay.
Speaker 3 (30:10):
What I'm saying is that a person should have other interests. Also,
I was very one dimensional and that all I was
was a basketball player. I didn't care about school, I
didn't care about anything else, and it took everything that
I had to be able to play basketball and I
could solve anything on the court that was happening. The
(30:32):
rest of life was really hard for me, and I
was just very fortunate that I didn't, you know, stray
into drugs and alcohol until I finished playing. I just
I think, deep down, I've got a lot of mental health,
mental illness in my family that we probably you know,
and alcoholism and drugs and stuff on both sides of
(30:55):
my family.
Speaker 1 (30:56):
Sure, because so much of that as hereditary, you know.
Speaker 2 (31:00):
Yeah, the parties were a blast as a kid, Christmas
and all that.
Speaker 3 (31:03):
I thought my family was great. We weren't around each
other the other times. Looking back, yeah, everybody was hammered.
They woke up drinking, went to bed drinking, and it
was fun for a kid.
Speaker 2 (31:14):
I think maybe deep down I knew that if I
did that, I would like it and I wouldn't be
able to play basketball. So I stayed away from it.
Speaker 3 (31:23):
And right when I finished, a doctor gave me oxy
conton I had had.
Speaker 1 (31:27):
You were injured, you were hurting, right.
Speaker 3 (31:29):
Yeah, I'd had seven surgeries my last three years of playing,
and I had a basic appendectomy.
Speaker 2 (31:35):
And I got off the plane and doctor gave me oxy.
Speaker 1 (31:37):
Contin and for an appendectomy.
Speaker 3 (31:40):
For an appendectomy, I said, it's a new drug ticket.
I took it and in two days I was in
the love. It was the greatest thing I'd ever had.
I still had three four years left on my contract.
I never played basketball again. They had to pay me
because I was injured and all that, but I had
no interest and anything else ever. Again, I felt like
(32:02):
it was the greatest thing. Where's this been my whole life?
I'm funnier, I'm happier, I'm a better dad, I'm a
better husband. I can sit in my own thoughts, and
it's a lie.
Speaker 2 (32:17):
I was addicted in two days. Though.
Speaker 3 (32:19):
It was fun for a second, then it was fun
with problems, and then it was just problems.
Speaker 2 (32:29):
And that happened very quickly. A matter of a year
and a half.
Speaker 3 (32:32):
I was in rehab and I was taking forty viking
in a day and ten OxyContin a day, just chewing
them up and eating them. You know, I was self
medicating because I was still angry about a lot of things,
I'm sure, and never had really put anything together.
Speaker 1 (32:47):
And you didn't have basketball anymore.
Speaker 2 (32:49):
That's the other thing.
Speaker 1 (32:50):
So if you're saying you were so myopic about basketball, right,
and you put everything your heart and sold everything into basketball,
and then you don't have it anymore, Yeah, well then
then what do you have, right?
Speaker 2 (33:03):
Yes? And John Lucas says all the time, he said,
athletes die twice. They die at the end of their life,
and they die at the end of their career.
Speaker 3 (33:09):
And when I started taking that medicine, you know, obviously
looking back. I was for sure agreed, like I didn't
want to even think about that. I mean, there's a
thrill to playing and this was happening every single day
for me from the time I was five or six
I played basketball. I'd make a game winner, I'd make
(33:29):
two game winners that day. I would go on a
run and demralize the other team. There's a feeling that
you get from doing that, and then when you do
it in games, of course that's great. The biggest thrill
is what you're getting from your teammates. But you get
those feelings every single day. What you never realize is
(33:52):
that's going to leave.
Speaker 2 (33:53):
I'm sure a lot of what I was doing was
trying to just numb the thoughts of all of that.
Speaker 1 (34:00):
But you know what is so interesting to hear you
talk about when I think about you, I think of
you with a smile on your face. You plastered that
smile on your face all the.
Speaker 2 (34:14):
Time, and it wasn't how I felt.
Speaker 1 (34:16):
It wasn't how I felt.
Speaker 2 (34:18):
Yeah, I was for sure starting to suffer from depression,
probably when I was seventeen or eighteen, and I felt
like everyone looked at me. I was very well. I
was famous in Kentucky and nationally. Probably from the time
I was sixteen or seventeen or eighteen, you were a star,
(34:39):
huge star, and like telling anyone like I wouldn't have
told my parents I'm depressed, I'm down. I don't feel
like that wasn't that was not manly a right. H'm
on the.
Speaker 3 (34:53):
Cover of magazines and all that stuff, and I felt
like a phony. But I also felt like other people
viewed me like I should be on top of the world,
and I didn't feel that way. So I was trying
to put on a I think a break face.
Speaker 2 (35:09):
Nobody's that happy all the time.
Speaker 1 (35:12):
Yeah, smile, smile even though your heart is breaking, right,
and you know.
Speaker 3 (35:15):
How it is, Hannah. You started being recognized from a
young age. Some people that are that way, like Dannying
is someone I just love and respect, and Danny. Danny
goes out in public and like I don't, maybe he does,
Maybe he does think about people looking at him. He
doesn't act like that bothers him or phases him. People
come up and talk to him. He seems just as
(35:37):
normal and natural as he always is. I've always thought
about people looking at me, and it's something that I
think a lot of people don't deal with. But when
you're out, strangers recognizing you and assuming that you know
them is weird. I started thinking about, like I idolized
(35:58):
Daryl Griffith growing up, and I remember what I how
I thought about Darryl as a kid, and if I'd
have seen him, if he treated me shitty, it would
have ruined my life, Like I would have been like,
oh my god. I felt a sort of a burden
with that. Take your responsibility, yeah, because I was going
to disappoint some kids. Even if I stayed and signed
(36:20):
for an hour. There's going to be some kids that
I don't sign for, and I didn't want to have
the person if they idolized me.
Speaker 2 (36:27):
I didn't want to ruin their day. And I'm sure
I did that a lot.
Speaker 1 (36:32):
You know what's so interesting when you talk about the
challenges of being in the public eye, and especially at
the age that you were all the expectations, is that
as you're emerging from your rehab and as you are
building sort of yet another chapter of your life, that
you choose to go into a public forum like Twitter,
(36:53):
which is a cesspool, okay of vitriol, and yet you
decide I'm going to start fighting all the funny stuff
I can out there and putting it on here. Things
are heartwarming, But that was your choice. That's such an
interesting choice to make, given all the things that we've
talked about.
Speaker 2 (37:13):
Yeah, and it was a complete accident. You know.
Speaker 3 (37:16):
I was doing some stuff for Kentucky basketball radio stuff
and I hated Twitter. I had probably seventy five thousand
Twitter followers. I hated it, and I hadn't been on
it in some time. But you know, you're kind of
supposed to have a social media presence these days. And
I just found a video video came across my phone
(37:38):
that was school of dolphins swimming out to the ocean
and a guy on a paddle board. One of them
jumped up hit him in the chest, and in my mind,
I said, that's a charge, like blocker charge, And I
asked that on Twitter. I just thought, you know, a
few basketball fans might get the reference and whatnot. Well,
it took off and pretty soon I don't have to
(37:59):
do any sports things on Twitter. I can just do this.
This is easy.
Speaker 2 (38:03):
People are sending me videos and then kind of the
pandemic hit and everyone's terrified sitting at home, and I've
gone from I don't know, seventy five thousand followers to
over a million in no time, and I think putting
those out, all of that stuff through the pandemic was
cathartic for some people. Definitely was cathartic for me.
Speaker 3 (38:26):
I'm not naturally the happiest guy in the world, so
you know, it was giving me a little bit of
a laugh and feeling of connection during that time. So yeah,
it was a complete accident, the Twitter thing, Hannah.
Speaker 1 (38:38):
I just think you're so amazing to share your story,
you know, especially I think for athletes, you know, it
might have be ingrained in you to share weakness and struggle,
and so I really admire you for that, and I'm
sure in the long run, you know, that's going to
have a bigger impact than even you did as a player.
Speaker 3 (38:59):
I hope, you know when I think about this, and
I'm going to try to not tear up, and I
hope it comes across in the book. My ex wife
went through just hell with me. I respect her more
now and love her more now than I ever did.
She's the best mom in the world. She was an
only child and she worried about whether she could like
(39:20):
be a mom to more than one kid.
Speaker 2 (39:22):
We had four kids. All Star mom, all star person.
You know, I have a lot of regrets, but you know,
treating her the way I did is top of little list.
Speaker 1 (39:32):
Yeah, as you were reaching back with all of the
strength you've had to move beyond your addiction and really
come to grips with you know, the realities of what
you were dealing with. Right, Did you reach back at
all into those playing days or who you were, friendships, relationships,
Did any of that give you give you strength?
Speaker 2 (39:53):
I think that's at the top of the list.
Speaker 3 (39:56):
I mean, I kind of feel a little guilty about
this because most addicts don't have a support system and
have the friends that I was able to meet and
have through playing basketball from the time I got to
rehab and in sports circles, and you probably knew I
didn't for a long time I was in and out
(40:17):
of rehab.
Speaker 2 (40:18):
People knew this in the sports that I had, you know,
had some issues, but it was became very public. You know,
I was arrested and I entered rehab, and that was
the first time that I, like had ever really tried
to dig into why I did the things that I
did and made the choices that I made and.
Speaker 3 (40:38):
The second I got to rehab, I'm in Louisville, Kentucky,
and the first person to come was Rick Patino.
Speaker 2 (40:44):
And Rick and I go way back. You know.
Speaker 3 (40:47):
He didn't coach me at Kentucky, but I've known him
from five Star camp since I was fifteen. Rick and
his assistant Vinnie Tatum came to see.
Speaker 2 (40:53):
Me, and I just balled. I bald.
Speaker 3 (40:57):
I was crying and saying, I'm just so fun toxic.
My life's over, my kids' lives are over. He said, Rex, listen,
and this is I'm barely out of detox, which is
hell for seven or ten days, and he said, you're
going to eat a lot of shit for a while.
He said, but if you keep learning and moving forward,
(41:19):
doing the next right thing, that it's going to go
from a beach ball size to a basketball. If you
keep doing the next right thing, it'll go to a volleyball,
and then to a softball and a baseball. Keep doing
the right thing, it'll go to a golf ball and
a ping pong ball and a pebble, and pretty soon,
when you get on the other side of that, he said,
(41:41):
that won't be the first thing people think of when
they think about you. And I heard it and I
thought insurmountable, you know, and but I remembered it. I'm
still talking about it here nine or ten years later,
and it's stuck with me. So many people like that,
so many people who I you know, Danny Ainge, and
(42:05):
I could go on and on people in basketball and
in sports and not just fans, literal fans.
Speaker 2 (42:11):
Yeah, I've had an amazing support system. You know. It's great.
My kids, you know, the stuff I was going through
their teenagers. There's a lot of guilt and shame and
all of that stuff. And again, the mom's a rock star.
They love me.
Speaker 1 (42:29):
You can't ask for more than that, right, you cannot
ask for anything more than that. I appreciate so much
sharing your story. It's so great to talk to you
and such a special person. And yeah, I know sharing
your journey is going to be super impactful.
Speaker 2 (42:44):
Thanks.
Speaker 1 (42:48):
That was Rex Chapman. If you want to hear more
from him, follow him on x at Rex Chapman, or
pick up a copy of his new book, It's Hard
for Me to Live with Me. Next time on NBA DNA,
here's Isaiah.
Speaker 2 (43:04):
Let's see what we got all the way
Speaker 1 (43:06):
Up Isaiah Thomas and the Motor City Bad Boys,
We're doing something a little different on NBA DNA this
week in revisiting the early days of the Charlotte Hornets.
I had a chance to speak with Rex Chapman for
our last episode, and his story is so compelling and
inspiring that we decided to share it. Here are Kentucky.
(00:29):
Chapman is one of the greatest players to emerge from
the basketball crazed state of Kentucky. At Apollo High School
in Owensboro, Rex was named Mister Basketball, also Gatorade Player
of the Year, Associated Press Player of the Year, and
a McDonald's All American. He went on to have two
(00:49):
remarkable seasons at the University of Kentucky, earning him the
nickname King Rex, before being selected eighth overall in the
nineteen eighty eight draft by the expansion Charlotte Hornets.
Speaker 2 (01:01):
Might be looking for somebody to give it, don to
give to Chapin night Well slammed up.
Speaker 3 (01:06):
That's a great play.
Speaker 2 (01:07):
I didn't think that six moore guide.
Speaker 1 (01:09):
Rex would go on to spend twelve years in the
league playing for the Washington Bullets, Miami Heat, and Phoenix Suns.
After Charlotte thought.
Speaker 2 (01:17):
It comes to chavel almost overthrown javelon shot it.
Speaker 1 (01:27):
Rex's pro basketball career included some spectacular moments, but was
marked by injury and struggles with depression and anxiety. Later,
he suffered from a gambling and opioid addiction. In late
twenty fourteen, Rex entered rehab and has worked since then
to rebuild his life, reach out to others, and be
(01:50):
a resource for the next generation of players. Today, almost
twenty five years after playing in his final game, Rex
is best known as a social media star, and he's
a New York Times best selling author. In February, he
released It's Hard for Me to Live with Me, a memoir.
(02:11):
It seems like yesterday that I first met the young
star with a thousand watt smile that hid those struggles,
And I'm grateful today to Rex for allowing me to
help share his story of perseverance. It is so good
(02:45):
to see you, Rack, you too, You too, Gosh. We
go for people who may not know you, and I
go way, way, way, way way back to your rookie
season and the inaugural season of the Charlotte Hornets. Man,
do you remember me at the time I met I
have obviously remember you, but you know you talk to
a lot of reporters and stuff. Back then, I was
like a local reporter, weekend anchor. We have a very
(03:06):
young wretch chat and coming in you pin some hopes
on a very young Teito whrror for both of.
Speaker 3 (03:11):
Them with just well, yeah, So what's weird about that
is that I came there and was the youngest player
in the league and I felt twelve inside, and everybody
on the team was much older than I was too,
And so I'm having to go and do these meetings,
you know, like you worked for who at the time.
Speaker 1 (03:31):
I worked for WPCQ Channel thirty six.
Speaker 2 (03:34):
Okay, so I'm doing all these going around.
Speaker 3 (03:36):
I've got this deal and that deal that I'm doing,
you know, endorsements and stuff, and like your station, I
think asked me to come over. I go over to
the station. It's a meeting that you're in. So I'm
nineteen or twenty and I'm sitting there and I'm thinking,
she's really cute thinking about you, And so I thought, though,
(03:56):
she's not done with college, So how someone my age
have this job?
Speaker 2 (04:01):
Because I was like, you know, maybe I'll ask her
to go out.
Speaker 3 (04:05):
And so after a month, I guess I asked someone
who knew how old you were, and they said, she's
twenty five, and I went, she's a woman. That's too old,
and how because you know, you look my age. But
when I found I was so intimidated. I thought, oh, no,
(04:26):
she's not a girl, she's a woman. Like that's off limits.
Speaker 1 (04:31):
That is hilarious. I am so happy to hear that now,
Oh my gosh. And of course everybody in Charlotte did
want to go out with you. You had that nickname
sexy Rexy. Yeah, what do you remember about that?
Speaker 3 (04:48):
It was just very weird, you know, and I was single,
and the Hornets were having me do auctions where I'd
be auctioned off and have to go on a date
with random people in the community, you know, thirty thirty
five year old women.
Speaker 2 (05:06):
I'm a child.
Speaker 3 (05:07):
I felt like a kid, you know, I'm twenty one,
twenty years old, and they're they're having me do this stuff,
and it just felt really weird.
Speaker 2 (05:15):
I felt like an alien.
Speaker 1 (05:16):
Yeah, I bet, because here you are. You would come
out of college after your sophomore year, so you you
hadn't even been to four years of college, right, And.
Speaker 2 (05:25):
I didn't get much done while I was there on court.
Speaker 1 (05:30):
You did on Yeah. Yeah, and then you go into
this situation. It's not like you just went into any
old team. You went into a crazed situation with this
new expansion team in North Carolina, which is as you know,
it's like Kentucky. I mean, people are just insane about
their basketball.
Speaker 2 (05:50):
The Charlotte Hornets select Rex Chapman of Kentucky.
Speaker 1 (05:57):
Coming out of the University of Kentucky after his sophomore
year wrecked chat and then you were the guy. It
was all veterans, right, that had come there in the
expansion draft, right, so they were older, some of them
had kids already. Yeah, you were still a kid.
Speaker 2 (06:15):
Yeah, but you were the.
Speaker 1 (06:17):
Face of the franchise.
Speaker 3 (06:18):
That's a lot, right, Yeah, you know when you say
it like that, Yes, I guess. However, I played at
Kentucky and those crowds very similar to the ones in Charlotte,
and you know, twenty four thousand people in Lexington and
there's nineteen or twenty in Charlotte. But the way they
(06:41):
loved us and you know, we're rabbid, was very much
the same.
Speaker 1 (06:49):
Crowd.
Speaker 3 (06:53):
I was fortunate that I was good enough to play
and be a good player that that wasn't my worry.
Speaker 2 (06:58):
I didn't have an issue with all of that. It
was just I felt like a kid.
Speaker 3 (07:02):
Thank God for Muggsy Bogues and Del Curry, who you
know are still two of my best friends. You know,
Stephan was born my rookie year, so I used to
babysit Steph and all that. Thank goodness for those guys.
You know, Dell taught me how to tie a tie stuff.
Speaker 2 (07:18):
Like really, yeah, yeah, I just felt much like a kid.
Speaker 3 (07:22):
Tom Tolbert was another rookie, but Tom was two three
years older than I was. He graduated from U of A.
That was the other thing that was hard was that
that was an era where I mean, most guys were
college graduates and I was not. And I think, I
don't know, I felt inferior kind of a bit. And uh,
(07:45):
you know, unless you were Magic or Isaiah. He didn't
leave school early.
Speaker 2 (07:50):
Chapman's guided.
Speaker 1 (07:51):
My magic was around magic underneath reverse.
Speaker 3 (07:55):
And I ended up in Charlotte, which was an expansion team, and.
Speaker 2 (07:58):
We were terrible. We were bearable. We were bad.
Speaker 3 (08:01):
We won nineteen games our first year and maybe twenty
the next, but we won attendance records every year. You know,
they hung the banners for the attendance in Charlotte.
Speaker 1 (08:15):
I talked to A Dell about this and he said,
you know, at the time, because Cleveland said, we're going
to keep Craig Elow because we think he can guard
Michael Jordan better. How ironic is that? You know? They
let him go right and the host Cleveland in the
first game, obviously he's injured. I think the Portus lost
by like forty points. But he said the fact that
(08:36):
the crowd gave a standing ovation afterwards, they're all there
in tuxes and gowns right that opening night, in some
ways that that seemed like surreal.
Speaker 2 (08:45):
Charlotte pomis it is the largest arena now in the NBA,
three thousands yees.
Speaker 3 (08:51):
To be completely honest, at the time, we were a
little embarrassed by it, because you got to remember, we're
going out there and we're playing, and yes, I know
the fans love it and all that. You get judged
by winning and losing in our profession, and so it's
almost like negative feedback because we're going to play, be
(09:12):
in every game for three three and a half quarters
until the other team decides to start playing harder and
gets all the calls and we lose.
Speaker 2 (09:19):
Eighty one fifty Doherty against Kempton, but that they loved
it that much. It was kind of confusing, But it
was a little embarrassing, you know, because we felt like
the other teams were like, they're getting ready to get
smacked in front of all these people.
Speaker 1 (09:35):
What do you learn from a situation like that? I mean,
Delle said, you know, he did learn about losing, you know,
and about surviving that and moving forward. What about you?
Speaker 3 (09:48):
No question about it. It's hard being a number one
or number two option scorer. I was really probably a
two or a three at best. But for stretch in Charlotte,
you know, I'm being guarded by Michael and Michael Cooper
and all the lockdown guys, and you find out very
(10:08):
quickly kind of where you are being able to fight
through that. A missed all the losing. I remember Ricky
Green pulled me aside one of our teammates, older teammates,
and I was really down about the losing, and he
pulled me aside and said, hey, Rex Listen Dell might
have been there too, said you two, we're going to
get beat three out of four nights.
Speaker 2 (10:27):
That's just the way it is. You guys are going
to play a long time, but you need to get
your shots up. Fifteen shots a game. You guys get
them up no matter what.
Speaker 3 (10:37):
And as a pro, you know, you're raised everything as
team and I'm coming from college where like that's not
something that you think about.
Speaker 2 (10:47):
And it was really good advice. I wasn't ready to
do that. Really, Dell probably wasn't either. You know.
Speaker 3 (10:55):
The other funny part about you said they traded him
because they thought Craig Elo could guard Mychael Jordan better.
Speaker 2 (11:01):
Nobody could guard Michael Jordan better.
Speaker 3 (11:03):
And when I say that, you know, the Hornets drafted
me to match up with Michael Jordan and stop him
in the East playing for Chicago. If you forward and
see how that went, Michael ended up owning the team
I was playing for.
Speaker 1 (11:20):
He owned him when he played, and then he bought
him leader.
Speaker 2 (11:25):
Jordan on the drive all the way from the time.
Speaker 1 (11:30):
Oh my gosh, what was it like? I mean, if
you're drafted with that kind of expectation and playing a
guy who well, obviously it was just a couple of
years after you started in the league and they started
winning their you know, first of their run of six
championships in eight years. What was it like going up
against him?
Speaker 3 (11:46):
Yeah, you know, I'd never been on the court, and
I'd played against Michael in the summer after being drafted.
Speaker 2 (11:52):
We played together and whatnot, And.
Speaker 3 (11:54):
Until that point, I had never really been on the
court with someone that I I kind of had to
admit was better than I was.
Speaker 2 (12:03):
Michael makes it look so easy so much of the time,
and I guess.
Speaker 3 (12:06):
For him and a his hands are so big, I
mean so big. If a ball comes off the rim
and ten guys are going for it, nine guys are
going for it with two hands as it goes towards
the corner. When you have hands so big that you
can reach out with one hand and grab it and
be gone, you're playing a different game. If he got
(12:26):
two feet in the paint, he's dunking it. He was
just different. And you know, it was fun, fun playing
against him.
Speaker 1 (12:35):
It was fun playing him. So it wasn't frustrating, it
wasn't intimidating. It was just you love the challenge it
and you could get him rush Chatman over Jordan for
three and I got it.
Speaker 3 (12:48):
You know, there are times you get him, he gets you.
He got me more than I got him. But I
was hurt a lot, and there were games when I
would miss playing against him. That just drove me insane.
And you got to remember, at the time, he's not
the greatest player in the world. He was on his way,
and at the time when I came in, he couldn't
(13:10):
really shoot yet. So for two or three years I
just backed off of him. Didn't really matter because he
was so crazy athletic and bouncy and quick and competitive.
Once he got where he could shoot, it it was
a rap, you know. And that he got where he
could shoot it is amazing. Shut It's just amazing. I
(13:38):
wasn't a great shooter. I was able to make clutch
shots and I could get my shot off and everything.
But also I'd never shot open shots before. I'd never
had open shots before. I'd always been the best player
on my team. And now Dell's a better shooter than me,
and Kelly Trapuka and Robert Reid and those guys.
Speaker 2 (13:53):
Are better shooters. Now I have to start making open shots,
and it was harder.
Speaker 1 (14:10):
You know, you mentioned Dell current.
Speaker 2 (14:14):
Shot.
Speaker 1 (14:14):
He's such a great person and obviously an incredible father,
and you look what his sons have been able to accomplish.
He's been rejected by the calves. Essentially, he lands here
and along you come, this young kid. Yeah, if you
got to speak to I don't know how he took
you under his wing or how he mentored you. Yeah,
because you obviously it was essential that you have somebody
(14:37):
like that. You were going to survive otherwise.
Speaker 2 (14:39):
I wasn't and I was young. All the friends I
knew were still in college. And when I.
Speaker 3 (14:44):
Got to Charlotte, I'd never lived a day in my
life without a roommate or been at my parents' house.
Speaker 2 (14:49):
So I got there and back.
Speaker 3 (14:51):
The first night, I was actually scared to go upstairs
because it was dark upstairs. I was a lottery pick
and I'm going to practice the next day. And I
went down and slept on the cow. I went out
this the next day, got over it that night, thought, Okay,
I'm this is dumb.
Speaker 2 (15:05):
I got over it that night. But I was that young.
Speaker 3 (15:08):
When I pulled into my subdivision, I hadn't even seen
my apartment.
Speaker 2 (15:12):
Someone said it, uh, there was furniture in there.
Speaker 3 (15:15):
And I pulled up and Dell had his He was
standing there like two doors down. He's sonya and Stephan.
She I mean, he was months old and he was hurt.
He'd broken his wrist.
Speaker 2 (15:28):
And from that day, like I didn't know how to
do laundry, Sonya did my laundry. They took care of
me and when they wanted to go out on a
date or whatever. I'd watched Stephan.
Speaker 3 (15:39):
I couldn't believe I had a friend that had a baby,
you know, and watching him grow up for the first
two or three years was amazing. But you know, to
the point, I think Dell would have had every reason.
He had already played in Utah and Cleveland, and he was,
you know, a mid first round picking low.
Speaker 2 (15:57):
For cutters along the baseline, left corner Shot Curry, Yes,
Sir Del Curry, drill.
Speaker 3 (16:02):
Now they drafted, you know, a two guard and the
college draft me. And so he helped me so much.
Like he could have been standoffish, they could have been. Honestly,
he's one of my best buddies. But he was like
a father figure to me. And in fact, Muggsy, Dell
and I were eating breakfast in Los Angeles. Dell's dad
(16:25):
was fifty eight years old at the time, and you know,
he came to a lot of our games, and they
talked before every single game, every game. This is like
before cell phones and stuff, right around that time, and
we're with Dell and Los Angeles. We just had shoot around,
I think, and we're in his room and Dell got
a phone call and his.
Speaker 2 (16:44):
Dad had died. Oh he was destroyed. We were destroyed.
Speaker 3 (16:49):
And I think us being young and things like those
things happening just sort of bonded us forever. I could
call that dude with anything right now and he would
pick up. He knows he could do the same with me.
He mugsy the same. We weren't very good those teams,
and some of the people on those teams that I
still have relationships with thirty years later, thirty five years later,
(17:12):
I'm so grateful, so thankful they do have a time out,
decide not to use a curry waiting.
Speaker 2 (17:23):
A little shit from.
Speaker 1 (17:24):
Curry was a little stuff, a well behaved child. I
think you're the only person I've talked to besides Dell
that knewhim when he was a tiny kid. What was
he like as a little guy. He's such a great
human being.
Speaker 3 (17:39):
I mean he is, and the fun you know, because
he's the first little baby i've been around, I've been
around little kids. But then I remember coming back to
the summer after the first year and he's talking. He's
calling Dell daddy, and I thought, this is hilarious. I've
got a friend who has a kid that calls him daddy.
Daddy is what I call Dell in my phone, what
(18:00):
I call him to.
Speaker 2 (18:01):
This day because of that.
Speaker 1 (18:02):
That's funny.
Speaker 3 (18:03):
What's fun about Stephan is every time I see him
or talk to him at a ball game or where
of it, it is, the very first moment is a
little smile, kind of a you know, and I don't
even know what we're smiling about. It's probably me playing
little games with him when he was a kid, and
those are kind of hardwired memories. I remember being in
(18:24):
the car coming home from a like an exhibition game
in Greenville, South Carolina, Me Del Muggsy and Stephan, and
I've said before, you know, I'm sure at the time
we thought we were big shit basketball players and the
best player in the car was in a baby seat
the whole time, but so true. Yeah, And Stephan was
(18:45):
just balling, crying, and Dale finally was like, take him
out of there.
Speaker 2 (18:49):
See, you know, if you can get him. I put
him on my chest.
Speaker 3 (18:52):
He went out like that, and I just remember feeling
his heart beating on mine and like right and close
to that moment, I.
Speaker 2 (18:58):
Was like, oh, I've got to be a dad's day.
Like he just went to sleep. So cool.
Speaker 1 (19:03):
Yeah, that's so cool. It was such a crazy year.
A couple of things were really unusual about the Hornets
back in the day. The uniforms.
Speaker 2 (19:16):
Alexander Julian, yes.
Speaker 1 (19:18):
Exactly, that teal and purple colorway, the big B and
most importantly.
Speaker 2 (19:23):
The sleets.
Speaker 3 (19:25):
I hated those uniforms and they're sort of iconic uniforms
now people, you know, for whatever reason.
Speaker 2 (19:32):
The jerseys are anyway, we hated them. We were embarrassed
by them, you know, fleets and the shorts. Also, it
was a brand new team in some ways, like I
knew the Sixers and the Celtics and the Lakers, and
what's the Hornets? What are the heat? What is this?
Speaker 3 (19:50):
And so in some ways it almost felt like we
weren't part of the NBA.
Speaker 1 (19:55):
I remember the Raptors. They were named because it was
like Jurassic Park was such a hot thing. Kids were
into dinosaurs and so okay, let's name the team the
Raptors and make it a cute dinosaur wolves.
Speaker 2 (20:06):
Yeah, what are we doing? The Orlando Magic?
Speaker 1 (20:10):
I know, I know that's so funny. You were a
knockdown shooter, but I'm not sure that fans remember you're
dunking acumen.
Speaker 2 (20:21):
Yeah.
Speaker 1 (20:22):
Yeah, I competed in the what was it in nineteen
ninety right as a Hornet? You came in six competed
in ninety one.
Speaker 3 (20:29):
Yeah, they made me do it, Hannah. I didn't really
want to do it. If I went to the All
Star Game. I wanted it to be as a player, okay,
and we're playing on really bad teams in Charlotte, and
you know, none of us are going to be All Stars,
none of us are good enough to be All Stars,
and so I just felt like it was a gimmick,
And so I didn't do it my first year, and
(20:50):
I was asked for ten years to do it.
Speaker 2 (20:53):
Cham toss us to himself for the two handed reverse jam.
You know, Bob, I didn't do it the first year.
Speaker 3 (21:00):
The next year it was in Miami the second year,
and the league and the Hornets basically made me do
it because I didn't do it my first year. The
next year it was in Charlotte, and I did not
want to do it again, felt obligated to do it,
and did it that year, and then you know, I
got traded shortly after, and I was determined the next
(21:21):
time I went, I was going to be an All
Star and I was voted in, and then I got
hurt and all that stuff. I just was not going
to go back as a gimmick in the dunk contest.
Speaker 2 (21:31):
First dunk Dominique Wilkins.
Speaker 1 (21:36):
You see, Dominique has such great burn.
Speaker 2 (21:38):
It was fun, you know, losing a dunk contest to
Dominique Wilkins. Not many people could say that.
Speaker 1 (21:43):
Yeah, if you're gonna lose, loose to the Human Highlights film,
you know what I mean, if you're gonna lose, lose
to a good one, right, you know. But it is
really interesting hearing you say that you were kind of
made to do something that you really didn't want to do.
It's kind of hard to imagine that today's era, right,
it seems like players are empowered a lot more than
(22:04):
they were back in the day. I think, so, do
you think so?
Speaker 2 (22:07):
Yes, you know, I think that's a good thing.
Speaker 3 (22:10):
Yeah, we talked about Michael Jordan takes a lot of
shit for not being more political. We came up in
an era where you wouldn't have a job, and Michael
probably was the only one of us that could really
afford to take a difficult political stance or have a
political stance of any kind.
Speaker 2 (22:32):
You know, that wasn't the world we lived in. He
did the best he could. You know, I think that
the players being a little more empowered today is a
good thing. You know. There's a lot of stuff that.
Speaker 3 (22:43):
You know, kind of went on, but I know you
know this, So from about age sixteen or seventeen to
twenty three or so, I had a black girlfriend, and
from a very young age, all through high school and
through Kentucky, I was sort of told to not do
that by different people, you know, institutional racism basically, and
(23:04):
I was really upset and angry about it.
Speaker 2 (23:08):
I didn't really realize it.
Speaker 3 (23:10):
Then I got to Charlotte and they were offering six
hundred and fifty thousand, which sounded like six hundred and fifty.
Speaker 2 (23:16):
Billion dollars to me.
Speaker 3 (23:18):
Sure with fortune and David Falk, my agent, wanted me
to hold out to get another twenty.
Speaker 2 (23:24):
Five thousand dollars.
Speaker 3 (23:25):
So I'm holding out for a week, and finally George
schen and Stupen and Spencer stop and CEO maybe. They
asked David and I to meet at his house, and
Spencer and David stay upstairs, and George takes me downstairs
and we're talking, chit chatting, and he said, do you
(23:46):
have a black girlfriend? And I said, uh what? He
asked me again, and we were broken up at the time.
I said, no, I don't, but if I did, and
that makes me a bad guy, then I guess I'll
just be a bad guy. That was the first time
I had ever stood up for myself really at all
on the topic.
Speaker 2 (24:05):
And I was nineteen two.
Speaker 1 (24:07):
What did he say when you said that?
Speaker 2 (24:09):
He said, no, no, no, no, no, I don't care.
Speaker 3 (24:13):
But other people, he said, other people, And then he
used the term that I'd never heard before. He said, no, no,
I'm just saying be careful because you know, we live
in the Bible Belt and I'd never heard that, but
I knew what it meant, and I just was so disheartened.
We went upstairs and the deal was done, just like that.
(24:36):
He gave the rest of the contract and really, yeah,
so it was just it was a hell of a
way to start off after I'd kind of just been
through it in college.
Speaker 1 (24:45):
Nobody talked about no and I up front. Then nobody
would be public about it. They would just like you said,
it would manifest itself in institutional racism.
Speaker 2 (24:55):
Yeah, in so many other ways. Was the real confusing
part of it for me too, is that On is
the girl. We're still very good friends. Her brother Mark
were from the same hometown. Her brother Mark and other
brother Kenny Kenny was a professional basketball player played in
the NBA. Her brother Mark played in the NFL. He
played for the Dolphins. He was the best running back
at UK and Sean had won the hundred in high
(25:18):
school twice in a row.
Speaker 3 (25:20):
Great athletic family. I'm being discouraged from dating her. Mark
and I are doing all the photo shoots at the
school together. Had she been white, people have wanted us
to get married and have a bazillion kids right away.
Speaker 1 (25:36):
Yeah, a parade for you.
Speaker 2 (25:38):
Yeah.
Speaker 3 (25:38):
There were times when I was told, you know, do
that be careful or go out at night that I
wanted to say, all right, let's go talk about this
in front of the team, you know, because I'm the
only white guy on the team.
Speaker 2 (25:50):
For the most part, and all my teammates are black.
And let's see how this goes down when you guys
say this in the locker room. To me, I didn't
have the gut. I didn't have the knowledge to say
this is you guys are wrong. I just didn't and
I lived with it.
Speaker 1 (26:10):
That's really that's a lot. Charlotte, you know, was a
very conservative town. And I even remember, you know, wearing
like a really nice suit that i'd gotten at like
the local belk or something, you know, at the time
getting hate mail at the station. You know, you should
not stand up on the court. Your skirt is too short,
(26:32):
you should not be covering basketball, You're distracting people, You're inappropriate,
You're you know, I mean, just.
Speaker 2 (26:39):
This makes a furnish to me. That's probably why I
thought you were always buttoned up. You were. Yeah, that
was another reason I probably thought, you know, look, she
is older, mature, she's but you were doing the same
thing I was doing. You were pretending to be a
grown up. Yeah. Yeah, well I.
Speaker 1 (26:57):
Think that, you know, when you're a young person and
you're finding yourself, or really at any age, because everyone
deserves to see who they want to to do. What
kind of job they want to to be who they are,
you know, but you get into a situation where even
if it's a few voices that are you know, bigoted, ignorant,
(27:19):
what have you, Even if it's a few when you're
a young person, that could really cut deep. You know,
I'm not equaiting our situation anyway, there's completely you know,
what you went through was terrible.
Speaker 2 (27:32):
No, I get it, but.
Speaker 1 (27:33):
You know what I'm saying, Like, I think when you're young,
and you were really young, you know, to kind of
have people speak to you that way.
Speaker 2 (27:39):
That was just confusing, very you know, and in the
midst of a negotiation too. Yeah, you know what I mean.
Speaker 3 (27:46):
Honestly, at that point, I still feel like, you know,
my parents should be around me when I have conversations
like this, Like, yeah, I felt like a kid, a
real child.
Speaker 1 (28:08):
Do you know that your dad and my dad actually intersected.
It's so crazy, I do. So your dad was playing
for the Kentucky Colonels when my dad.
Speaker 3 (28:18):
Was there, Okay, And this is why, Like it was
confusing to me because when he told me that, I
was like, wait, that's not her name her name or exactly,
and he said, yeah, and he gave an answer that
I didn't really understand, but it did convince me that
he was your dad.
Speaker 2 (28:36):
Yeah, how wild is that?
Speaker 1 (28:38):
That's crazy. I actually had to cross reference it because
I'm like, okay, so I knew your dad played for
the Colonels and the Pacers, so we played for a
couple of ABA teams. Obviously my dad was with the
Colonels and the Pacers. So I was like putting like
the years together, Like, yeah, they definitely cross paths.
Speaker 2 (28:53):
Yeah, in Louisville they did.
Speaker 1 (28:55):
Yeah, that's so crazy to you. I mean, you are
obviously little, but when you were remember about sort of
your dad those days.
Speaker 3 (29:03):
You know, I don't remember a whole lot because I
was little, but I would guess he was probably finished
playing by the time I was four or five. But
I remember being at a few games and I would
see the red, white, and blue balls over there on
the rack, and like, if I could have just had
anything in the world, it would be that ball rack,
(29:24):
and I would go over and I'd grab a ball.
From time to time, without my mom knowing, I'd run
out there and i'd shoot a basket and I would
hear people cheer.
Speaker 2 (29:34):
Really yeah, and from a very young age. I probably
did more damage than good. I bed off of feedback
like that, so that I always wanted to be a
basketball player, didn't ever want to be anything else, had
no other dreams or aspirations. That's not a really good
way to go through life, very healthy way to go
(29:56):
through life.
Speaker 1 (29:56):
But you don't think so, though, because I think not
knowing what you want to do is also I mean,
you had a goal, I had something that you worked towards,
and it's okay to love it is.
Speaker 2 (30:07):
But I know I'm not saying that. Okay.
Speaker 3 (30:10):
What I'm saying is that a person should have other interests. Also,
I was very one dimensional and that all I was
was a basketball player. I didn't care about school, I
didn't care about anything else, and it took everything that
I had to be able to play basketball and I
could solve anything on the court that was happening. The
(30:32):
rest of life was really hard for me, and I
was just very fortunate that I didn't, you know, stray
into drugs and alcohol until I finished playing. I just
I think, deep down, I've got a lot of mental health,
mental illness in my family that we probably you know,
and alcoholism and drugs and stuff on both sides of
(30:55):
my family.
Speaker 1 (30:56):
Sure, because so much of that as hereditary, you know.
Speaker 2 (31:00):
Yeah, the parties were a blast as a kid, Christmas
and all that.
Speaker 3 (31:03):
I thought my family was great. We weren't around each
other the other times. Looking back, yeah, everybody was hammered.
They woke up drinking, went to bed drinking, and it
was fun for a kid.
Speaker 2 (31:14):
I think maybe deep down I knew that if I
did that, I would like it and I wouldn't be
able to play basketball. So I stayed away from it.
Speaker 3 (31:23):
And right when I finished, a doctor gave me oxy
conton I had had.
Speaker 1 (31:27):
You were injured, you were hurting, right.
Speaker 3 (31:29):
Yeah, I'd had seven surgeries my last three years of playing,
and I had a basic appendectomy.
Speaker 2 (31:35):
And I got off the plane and doctor gave me oxy.
Speaker 1 (31:37):
Contin and for an appendectomy.
Speaker 3 (31:40):
For an appendectomy, I said, it's a new drug ticket.
I took it and in two days I was in
the love. It was the greatest thing I'd ever had.
I still had three four years left on my contract.
I never played basketball again. They had to pay me
because I was injured and all that, but I had
no interest and anything else ever. Again, I felt like
(32:02):
it was the greatest thing. Where's this been my whole life?
I'm funnier, I'm happier, I'm a better dad, I'm a
better husband. I can sit in my own thoughts, and
it's a lie.
Speaker 2 (32:17):
I was addicted in two days. Though.
Speaker 3 (32:19):
It was fun for a second, then it was fun
with problems, and then it was just problems.
Speaker 2 (32:29):
And that happened very quickly. A matter of a year
and a half.
Speaker 3 (32:32):
I was in rehab and I was taking forty viking
in a day and ten OxyContin a day, just chewing
them up and eating them. You know, I was self
medicating because I was still angry about a lot of things,
I'm sure, and never had really put anything together.
Speaker 1 (32:47):
And you didn't have basketball anymore.
Speaker 2 (32:49):
That's the other thing.
Speaker 1 (32:50):
So if you're saying you were so myopic about basketball, right,
and you put everything your heart and sold everything into basketball,
and then you don't have it anymore, Yeah, well then
then what do you have, right?
Speaker 2 (33:03):
Yes? And John Lucas says all the time, he said,
athletes die twice. They die at the end of their life,
and they die at the end of their career.
Speaker 3 (33:09):
And when I started taking that medicine, you know, obviously
looking back. I was for sure agreed, like I didn't
want to even think about that. I mean, there's a
thrill to playing and this was happening every single day
for me from the time I was five or six
I played basketball. I'd make a game winner, I'd make
(33:29):
two game winners that day. I would go on a
run and demralize the other team. There's a feeling that
you get from doing that, and then when you do
it in games, of course that's great. The biggest thrill
is what you're getting from your teammates. But you get
those feelings every single day. What you never realize is
(33:52):
that's going to leave.
Speaker 2 (33:53):
I'm sure a lot of what I was doing was
trying to just numb the thoughts of all of that.
Speaker 1 (34:00):
But you know what is so interesting to hear you
talk about when I think about you, I think of
you with a smile on your face. You plastered that
smile on your face all the.
Speaker 2 (34:14):
Time, and it wasn't how I felt.
Speaker 1 (34:16):
It wasn't how I felt.
Speaker 2 (34:18):
Yeah, I was for sure starting to suffer from depression,
probably when I was seventeen or eighteen, and I felt
like everyone looked at me. I was very well. I
was famous in Kentucky and nationally. Probably from the time
I was sixteen or seventeen or eighteen, you were a star,
(34:39):
huge star, and like telling anyone like I wouldn't have
told my parents I'm depressed, I'm down. I don't feel
like that wasn't that was not manly a right. H'm
on the.
Speaker 3 (34:53):
Cover of magazines and all that stuff, and I felt
like a phony. But I also felt like other people
viewed me like I should be on top of the world,
and I didn't feel that way. So I was trying
to put on a I think a break face.
Speaker 2 (35:09):
Nobody's that happy all the time.
Speaker 1 (35:12):
Yeah, smile, smile even though your heart is breaking, right,
and you know.
Speaker 3 (35:15):
How it is, Hannah. You started being recognized from a
young age. Some people that are that way, like Dannying
is someone I just love and respect, and Danny. Danny
goes out in public and like I don't, maybe he does,
Maybe he does think about people looking at him. He
doesn't act like that bothers him or phases him. People
come up and talk to him. He seems just as
(35:37):
normal and natural as he always is. I've always thought
about people looking at me, and it's something that I
think a lot of people don't deal with. But when
you're out, strangers recognizing you and assuming that you know
them is weird. I started thinking about, like I idolized
(35:58):
Daryl Griffith growing up, and I remember what I how
I thought about Darryl as a kid, and if I'd
have seen him, if he treated me shitty, it would
have ruined my life, Like I would have been like,
oh my god. I felt a sort of a burden
with that. Take your responsibility, yeah, because I was going
to disappoint some kids. Even if I stayed and signed
(36:20):
for an hour. There's going to be some kids that
I don't sign for, and I didn't want to have
the person if they idolized me.
Speaker 2 (36:27):
I didn't want to ruin their day. And I'm sure
I did that a lot.
Speaker 1 (36:32):
You know what's so interesting when you talk about the
challenges of being in the public eye, and especially at
the age that you were all the expectations, is that
as you're emerging from your rehab and as you are
building sort of yet another chapter of your life, that
you choose to go into a public forum like Twitter,
(36:53):
which is a cesspool, okay of vitriol, and yet you
decide I'm going to start fighting all the funny stuff
I can out there and putting it on here. Things
are heartwarming, But that was your choice. That's such an
interesting choice to make, given all the things that we've
talked about.
Speaker 2 (37:13):
Yeah, and it was a complete accident. You know.
Speaker 3 (37:16):
I was doing some stuff for Kentucky basketball radio stuff
and I hated Twitter. I had probably seventy five thousand
Twitter followers. I hated it, and I hadn't been on
it in some time. But you know, you're kind of
supposed to have a social media presence these days. And
I just found a video video came across my phone
(37:38):
that was school of dolphins swimming out to the ocean
and a guy on a paddle board. One of them
jumped up hit him in the chest, and in my mind,
I said, that's a charge, like blocker charge, And I
asked that on Twitter. I just thought, you know, a
few basketball fans might get the reference and whatnot. Well,
it took off and pretty soon I don't have to
(37:59):
do any sports things on Twitter. I can just do this.
This is easy.
Speaker 2 (38:03):
People are sending me videos and then kind of the
pandemic hit and everyone's terrified sitting at home, and I've
gone from I don't know, seventy five thousand followers to
over a million in no time, and I think putting
those out, all of that stuff through the pandemic was
cathartic for some people. Definitely was cathartic for me.
Speaker 3 (38:26):
I'm not naturally the happiest guy in the world, so
you know, it was giving me a little bit of
a laugh and feeling of connection during that time. So yeah,
it was a complete accident, the Twitter thing, Hannah.
Speaker 1 (38:38):
I just think you're so amazing to share your story,
you know, especially I think for athletes, you know, it
might have be ingrained in you to share weakness and struggle,
and so I really admire you for that, and I'm
sure in the long run, you know, that's going to
have a bigger impact than even you did as a player.
Speaker 3 (38:59):
I hope, you know when I think about this, and
I'm going to try to not tear up, and I
hope it comes across in the book. My ex wife
went through just hell with me. I respect her more
now and love her more now than I ever did.
She's the best mom in the world. She was an
only child and she worried about whether she could like
(39:20):
be a mom to more than one kid.
Speaker 2 (39:22):
We had four kids. All Star mom, all star person.
You know, I have a lot of regrets, but you know,
treating her the way I did is top of little list.
Speaker 1 (39:32):
Yeah, as you were reaching back with all of the
strength you've had to move beyond your addiction and really
come to grips with you know, the realities of what
you were dealing with. Right, Did you reach back at
all into those playing days or who you were, friendships, relationships,
Did any of that give you give you strength?
Speaker 2 (39:53):
I think that's at the top of the list.
Speaker 3 (39:56):
I mean, I kind of feel a little guilty about
this because most addicts don't have a support system and
have the friends that I was able to meet and
have through playing basketball from the time I got to
rehab and in sports circles, and you probably knew I
didn't for a long time I was in and out
(40:17):
of rehab.
Speaker 2 (40:18):
People knew this in the sports that I had, you know,
had some issues, but it was became very public. You know,
I was arrested and I entered rehab, and that was
the first time that I, like had ever really tried
to dig into why I did the things that I
did and made the choices that I made and.
Speaker 3 (40:38):
The second I got to rehab, I'm in Louisville, Kentucky,
and the first person to come was Rick Patino.
Speaker 2 (40:44):
And Rick and I go way back. You know.
Speaker 3 (40:47):
He didn't coach me at Kentucky, but I've known him
from five Star camp since I was fifteen. Rick and
his assistant Vinnie Tatum came to see.
Speaker 2 (40:53):
Me, and I just balled. I bald.
Speaker 3 (40:57):
I was crying and saying, I'm just so fun toxic.
My life's over, my kids' lives are over. He said, Rex, listen,
and this is I'm barely out of detox, which is
hell for seven or ten days, and he said, you're
going to eat a lot of shit for a while.
He said, but if you keep learning and moving forward,
(41:19):
doing the next right thing, that it's going to go
from a beach ball size to a basketball. If you
keep doing the next right thing, it'll go to a volleyball,
and then to a softball and a baseball. Keep doing
the right thing, it'll go to a golf ball and
a ping pong ball and a pebble, and pretty soon,
when you get on the other side of that, he said,
(41:41):
that won't be the first thing people think of when
they think about you. And I heard it and I
thought insurmountable, you know, and but I remembered it. I'm
still talking about it here nine or ten years later,
and it's stuck with me. So many people like that,
so many people who I you know, Danny Ainge, and
(42:05):
I could go on and on people in basketball and
in sports and not just fans, literal fans.
Speaker 2 (42:11):
Yeah, I've had an amazing support system. You know. It's great.
My kids, you know, the stuff I was going through
their teenagers. There's a lot of guilt and shame and
all of that stuff. And again, the mom's a rock star.
They love me.
Speaker 1 (42:29):
You can't ask for more than that, right, you cannot
ask for anything more than that. I appreciate so much
sharing your story. It's so great to talk to you
and such a special person. And yeah, I know sharing
your journey is going to be super impactful.
Speaker 2 (42:44):
Thanks.
Speaker 1 (42:48):
That was Rex Chapman. If you want to hear more
from him, follow him on x at Rex Chapman, or
pick up a copy of his new book, It's Hard
for Me to Live with Me. Next time on NBA DNA,
here's Isaiah.
Speaker 2 (43:04):
Let's see what we got all the way
Speaker 1 (43:06):
Up Isaiah Thomas and the Motor City Bad Boys,
Host
Hannah Storm
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