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09/29/20 The Mavericks owner rescues Delonte West from the street and will pay for his rehabilitation
The first video showed a man getting beaten up in the middle of the road.
The second revealed that the man who had been scared off on the shoulder was
Delonte West
.
He appeared bloody, shirtless, and unable to string together two coherent words.
His is not the story of the former NBA player ruined by a life of excess (an old report from 'Sports Illustrated' estimated at 60% the players who declared bankruptcy within five years of retiring).
His hole was deeper:
a bipolar disorder that entangled first his career and then his life
.
Delonte West named his problem in 2008, while still the starting point guard for the Cleveland Cavaliers.
That summer he starred in a violent episode with a referee in a preseason party that led him to leave the team for two weeks.
"The ugly things in the head had reappeared. They have haunted me all my life, a self-destructive behavior," he confessed on his return.
In a report published by the
Washington Post
in 2015, he elaborated more on those black areas, on how as a teenager he began to injure himself and take pills in repeated suicide attempts.
'Fall and resurrection of Delonte West', the article was titled, where he assured that he had stopped taking medication.
A year later, he appeared wandering barefoot through the streets of Houston.
Homeless
The videos from a year ago confirmed to the general public what had long been more than a suspicion for the NBA: that Delonte West
was homeless and had serious addiction problems
.
They would also be the last until they found him in September begging for alms.
Mark Cuban, the owner of the Dallas Mavericks, who had already tried to help him several times, spent days wandering around until he found him at a gas station.
It wasn't the first time Cuban had reached out to him.
His Mavs were the last to give him an honest chance in the NBA, when mental, personal and financial problems were joined by legal ones.
In 2009, just a year after that explosion against a referee, he was arrested while driving under the influence of treatment for his disorder.
He carried two pistols, a shotgun hidden in a guitar case, and a hunting knife.
The police report stated that West was cooperative throughout - he was moving the weapons to another house - but the episode prevented him from finding a home in Dallas.
As he recounted years later in a report for 'Slate', that season
he lived in the Mavs' pavilion
, sleeping for a few days in the locker room and others in the parking lot.
The following year, an incident in the locker room permanently separated him from the team.
Rehabilitation center
Despite the disagreement, Mark Cuban continued to throw life jackets.
In 2015, with his career doomed, he gave him one last chance with the Mavs' affiliate team, the Texas Legends.
Already more alms than sports betting.
A year later he was wandering barefoot down the street.
His descent, the story of a man who failed to cope with his illness and a competition who, while doing a great job of raising awareness about mental health, did not know how to help him.
And it is now also a hope.
Last September, Cuban met him at a gas station, reunited him with his mother, and admitted him to a Florida rehab center.
A few weeks later another video appeared, this time playing basketball.
And this Tuesday the journalist Shams Charania announced that West has found work in the center
.
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