Eddie Griffin…did the NBA fail him?
Eddie Griffin died last week when he crashed his car into a moving freight train. He ignored warning lights and sirens and barricades to crash into the train. He was burned so badly that they had to identify him through dental records. Everyone is wondering today if it was suicide or not. Nobody is wondering if Eddie Griffin was a troubled soul.
Some people around me, who don’t follow basketball, have been asking who he was. I asked them if they heard of the NBA player who crashed his car while watching a porn flick last year. Most have heard of that story and even chuckle a little bit at it but now it isn’t so funny. Eddie Griffin was struggling in life and died an unhappy person. Did the NBA help or hurt this kid?
When Eddie Griffin came out of high school he was one of the top recruits in the nation. He signed with Seton Hall with a heralded recruiting class and he performed very well as a Freshman. He was a very smooth player who had great defensive skills and who I thought would have been an all star right now. I watched him every chance I could. He could run, jump, shoot and block shots like crazy. His timing was amazing. Socially, the signs were all there that this kid had issues. He got in a fight in high school and in knocked out a college teammate once. Lots of kids get in fights though right?
The Houston Rockets drafted Eddie and if I remember right traded draft rights to Richard Jefferson to get him. He was a clear cut lottery choice and every team saw it that way. I praised the Rockets for doing it because Eddie Griffin had it all.
From there everything is a haze. Eddie seemed to struggle with simple decisions and life with all that money. He was an instant millionaire and reportedly hung out with the wrong people. Most recently he was given a 3 year contract with the Twolves and then he went AWOL. He violated the leagues substance abuse policy and went to rehab more than once. The Twolves cut him loose and that was it. Can you imagine what he was going through? At a young age Eddie knew he was going to be an NBA player and expected it. It came true and was over by the time he was 25 years old. 25 years old and everything he’d worked for was over. That wouldn’t be an enjoyable feeling to have when you wake up one day and realize that your actions caused it all. That accountability must have been very hard to bear. Maybe so hard to bear that he kept trying to find it in a bottle.
I always held out hope for Eddie and what he could do on a court. Maybe the NBA was too much too soon or was it all inevitable. If he had stayed in school for 3-4 years would it have been avoided or would it have happened earlier. We’ll never know. People have compared him to Len Bias, but Len Bias never got the chance to truly play. Griffin did and failed to take advantage. He should be in his 2nd or 3rd year of a max contract but instead he’s gone. Rest in peace Eddie, finally.
October 29th, 2007 at 11:40 am
Through a recent autopsy it was determined that Eddie Griffin had 3 times the legal limit of alcohol in his system when he crashed into a speeding train and was killed. In Texas, the legal limit is .08 and he was found to have had .26.