Basketball Junkie: A Memoir Author: Visit Amazon's Chris Herren Page | Language: English | ISBN:
1250006899 | Format: PDF
Basketball Junkie: A Memoir Description
From Publishers Weekly
In this blunt, self-deprecating memoir, Herren tells his story as one of the greatest high school athletes to come out of southern New England. Fall River, Mass., has a storied basketball tradition, and Herren's achievements on the court made him a local hero as well as bringing him to the attention of national recruiters and Sports Illustrated. Overwhelmed by expectations, Herren avoided school and abused drugs and alcohol. Although Herren managed to make it to the NBA, his life continued to spin out of control until he OD'd in his car and was found unconscious with a bag of heroin on the seat beside him. Herren offers explanations for his downfall but doesn't make excuses. Neither does he glorify the partying and excess that made his life a blur. What he does achieve is something more valuable: giving a stark portrayal of the surreal existence led by young sports stars in a world of rapacious agents, vicious rivals, oblivious fans, and educational institutions that enable their "student" athletes to get away with almost anything. In the end, this is a sobering, cautionary tale for star-athletes-to-be. (May)
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""A sobering, cautionary tale for star-athletes-to-be."" ---Publishers Weekly
--This text refers to the
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- Paperback: 288 pages
- Publisher: St. Martin's Griffin; Reprint edition (May 8, 2012)
- Language: English
- ISBN-10: 1250006899
- ISBN-13: 978-1250006899
- Product Dimensions: 8.2 x 5.5 x 0.8 inches
- Shipping Weight: 9.1 ounces (View shipping rates and policies)
For some reason I've been reading quite a few memoirs lately about people who crash and burn due to addiction and then make it back out of the cesspool. There is a potential hazard with serial reading like this, as there is a risk of all of these stories starting to jumble together. However, I needn't have worried in this case, as Chris Herren presents a searing and brutally honest telling of his epic downfall from NBA player to junkie.
This memoir follows Herren from his well-documented time as a high school basketball star to his college and professional playing days in the NBA as well as overseas. This provides a glimpse into what the life of a college and professional athlete can be like underneath all of the perks. Although Herren never lets himself off the hook for his misdeeds, at times he does seem to be an apologist for others such as Jerry Tarkanian, who depending on your point of view is either Sports' Spawn of Satan or a man who believed in second chances.
In this book more than any other similar tome that I've read recently, I got the sense that this was a story that Herren absolutely had to tell, though he is so incredibly upfront about his various misdeeds that I almost suspect he may be punishing himself for his past transgressions. It has a feel of atonement. He makes no excuses; he blames no one other than himself. I admire that. And while I was concerned at first that this might be another case of an athlete staying sober for a month and calling it a recovery, by the end of the story it seems clear to me that after two years in recovery, Herren has all the tools in place to make it.
The overall message of this book is not just "hey kids, don't do drugs".
Bill Reynolds' "Fall River Dreams" made Chris Herren a national celebrity when he was just sixteen; but this was just one more pressure on an impressionable youth. Already a teen delinquent in a no-hope town, where only the basketball team bound the community, even the adults pinned their aspirations of Herren's college and NBA careers. But the pressure, frustration, and despair manifested in the form of several abusive, self-destructive addictions.
Seventeen years after Herren reached stardom, this memoir recounts how his demons became the center of his life. He achieved the heights of stardom, playing under Jerry Tarkanian before the NBA draft. His paychecks soared so high that he lost more in one card game than I make per year. But everything paled for Herren beside his hunger for the next fix. Piece by piece, he lost everything that mattered.
Herren's brutal honesty regarding his long string of bad choices recreates his horrific experience. As he repeatedly makes bad bets and pins his hopes on false promises, we feel life's weight mounting as relentlessly as Herren must have. And when he finally hits rock bottom, sees everything he still stands to lose, and chooses to pull his life back together, we feel the same weight lifted off our own shoulders.
Unfortunately, we can see Herren's lack of experience in writing. Reynolds' prologue says that Herren seldom read in high school, and this book suggests he hasn't remedied that much since.
For instance, consider the really short paragraphs.
They accumulate.
The f***ing language gets distracting.
He makes "you" the center of many of his anecdotes, like he's deflecting.
And all his rhetorical questions?
Don't even get me started.
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