[Hang Up and Listen] Royce White Interview on Slate

Transcript already there but not to put my efforts to waste, I'll leave it here anyways.

Spoiler

What were your expectations when you were drafted by the Rockets in the first round?

I really didn't have any. I understood that I was one of the first players to be so honest and public about my mental health struggles on the front end. I knew that it was gonna be a long process and some growing pains along the way. I expected that from day one.

When your career at Iowa State and really kicked into gear and you had transferred to Iowa State after a struggle at a first school, you had plan in place and it was pretty regimented. Can you talk about how you thought you would translate that plan that helped you get drafted to the professional level? Any managers or psychologists?

The plan Iowa State implemented was a simple one. It was listen. Coach Hoiberg was great and understanding that he knew very little about mental health. Part of the reason he was open because he has his own health issue. He understood he not only needed to listen to the doctors but to me and that I wasn't going to try and get over him using my condition. We had that understanding and ended up working well together.

You had someone working close with you at Iowa State, your guide. You mentioned on twitter about a protocol. What specifically are you seeking from that protocol? What is it the team hasn't been able to come to an agreement with you?

2 pieces to it. 1. Under ADA law, anyone who has a disability in the workplace, and your job has over 50 employees, your job is required to accommodate you and the accommodation needs to be reasonable. The protocol here is just that when a medical situation arises dealing with mental health related symptoms, that a medical professional takes the lead on how to move forward, whether that be not moving at all, moving slow, or 100 miles per hour. Someone that is qualified and trained to give medical advice is a person who is at the lead of that. I think that is logical and sensible. To allow Daryl Morey, for example, to take the lead on that is not only illogical but at the bare minimum unsafe.

Who did the Rockets call when you were drafted? Who did they communicate with and what did they communicate?

Nah, this arrived when we were about to go to training camp. There were a number of things going on with me. My doctor recommended, who is my family practice doc, who first diagnosed my illness in HS and started giving me advice since, said you need to stop doing anything until they get a solid plan in place that is well thought out and considerate and that's well within your right to ask for. That's what I did. I said "Hey, let's get a plan in place and until we do, it won't be safe. The workplace is not safe." That's the bottom line. They were very open to it in the beginning. They wanted to get together and do it. Once they figured out how complex it might get, that willingness ....(?)

Who was representing you with this plan?

It was collaborative. My agents and I were in constant communication with them. We talked about my travel. I probably took about 20 total flights at Iowa State. They caused me some stress. To go from 20 to 96 flights, for someone with plane phobia, is risky for the amount of exposure. We said, OK, how will we rectify that? We asked to be allowed to bus to games that are close enough. Whatever we can do that is feasible. That negotiation took awhile to do for a number of reasons. A) Who was going to pay? That became an issue. The Rockets finally agreed that it does make sense for them to pick up that cost because travel requirements are something that teams do and first class travel requirements is something that is in the CBA. They agreed to that. Also there was putting it in writing. That was something the NBA didn't want them to do. They came back and said they could. Big weird process where again protocol was absent. We finally got that squared away. We started off the season. We were traveling. Some other things were happening. Then more stressful situations. I was starting to have migraines. I said "Hey, let's go back to the protocol. Where are we at with that?" That's when it started to get a little tense.

The level of support you need to work safely but also a larger question of are you pressing these issues because you really believe you can't function without something specific or has this become something larger for you?

It has become something bigger. Never my intention for that. It happened because the mental illness community by default is one that is quiet and I'm unique to that group in that I'm not quiet and it's something we've been avoiding for years and years. We have players in the NBA right now with mental issues, probably even on my team, and there is no protocol in place. There is an issue out there being talked about but never being acted on. Talking about Iowa State, it's tough in terms of support. You can't compare the two. In college, the coach is the head honcho. What Hoiberg says at Iowa State goes. What McHale says here in Houston is neither here or there when talking about front office issues. Hoiberg doesn't have a boss. The AD ,yeah, but the AD really gives the power back to him. At the end of the day, you'll never see the same support on a professional team that you see on a college team. There's not the money factor involved with the players. That adds a different dynamic. The structure is set up different.

You've been outspoken on twitter. Your platform to help others with mental health issues, and I think most have seen the short documentary on Grantland and understand you from that. Your platform to have things like that is enormous. How do you balance the understanding of your broader goals as an athlete with the risk that if you don't have the NBA, you won't have that access to people to change the way they think.

Here's what I believe: I believe in the truth. I'm a big seeker of the truth. A big applier of the truth when I can find it. Some people will argue that the truth and what's not true is always up for debate. I don't believe that. I believe the truth is the truth whether anyone knows it or not. I also believe if I stand for being true and honest and I stand for people, welfare is a big thing of mine, I'm very humanitarian in my belief, but absolutely I will effect change in a way that is positive. That's all that is important. Having a platform that is bigger but not built on the right ideas, it will crumble eventually. It may not crumble in terms of reaching people but the genuineness of the message crumbles at some point. If the platform evaporates, I've always done a lot more than basketball. I'm a writer by craft who happens to play basketball up to a point where it allows me some potential avenues and opportunities.

We saw you struggle on draft day to be in the room with your family and friends. Help us understand what someone with anxiety goes through. What are your triggers?

The truth is I don't just deal with anxiety. That is something the Rockets know, something most people know now. I deal with OCD and PTSD, a lot of us deal with PTSD and we don't even know it. That's the next cookie that will crumble. They all manifest in different ways. Anxiety, I have a lot of uncertainties, very potentially uncomfortable not knowing, when I first started having anxiety, it was because I was very uncertain with my own health, like my physical health, my heart and my lungs. I had a friend who collapsed and almost died due to a heart condition they didn't know about. It was about my health. When I X'ed out all those issues, my anxiety has been pretty good. I'll have the occasional time where if I'm stressed out, it becomes hard to focus or sweaty palms. The plane phobia is entirely different. That is independent, me not liking to fly. Probably has a lot to do with heights and trust. The general anxiety in itself has a lot of symptoms. Can affect your sleep and eating habits, can affect so many things. It's a navigation. You have to constantly be aware of it and pay attention to so many things. You have to eliminate the alarming stressors.

What was the trauma with PTSD?

Watched my friend collapse and almost die. Had to get a spinal tap open heart surgery. Had a friend die in a car accident. I'm still very apprehensive about cars today. My mom was in an abusive relationship when I was young. There are some many things people go through that are very traumatic that they don't even realize. That's where you talk about message. That's the only message here. People need to start checking in more with themselves on a mental health level and stop thinking whatever comes, you just push through it. Yeah, you can push through it but are you pushing through at 100% or kinda slowly but surely everything that happens that you don't address chips away from who you are, leaves a scar, leaves a scar, and pretty soon you're not well.

Going back to the protocol, did the NBPA have anything to say?

They said the reality is they don't believe the NBA or teams would agree to it because it's about control and power. The conversation the NBPA and I had were a lot more candid than I would say on air. That's the gist of it. Always a battle for power. The unfortunate thing is that that battle leaves a subtle war between business and health.

From the conversations you had with the NBPA, did they support or oppose you getting this protocol in place?

They supported it.

Can you understand that people may wonder if you really want to play in the NBA?

No I really don't understand that. I do a number of different things. If I didn't want to play, I wouldn't be fighting for it. I would just call it quits, get a buyout, stop playing. I don't have to continue to stand up for what's right and what's honest unless I want to play in this league. There's always an option to not to play in the league but I don't believe the right I have to choose between a hazardous work situation in this industry and not playing at all. I don't think those choices are logical or fair.

Do you think this disagreement with the Rockets, has that affected your anxiety disorder?

It definitely heightened. I do a very good job because I'm an advocate for mental health, and I do a lot of research and I know a lot about myself. If you research hypervigilance, people with anxiety develop a keen sense of their interior and exterior circumstances. I do a good job of maintaining my own anxiety, now that I know I have it. The way I do that is to stay away from my triggers. Everyone has to know their triggers. Maybe I need to stay away from a plane. I do a good job of that on my own. Ever since the situation occurred, there are stress exasperating things going on that is out of my control. Until resolved, I'll continue to experience some exasperating symptoms like I never had migraines before, now I have migraines. I usually don't sleep well, now I'm really not sleeping well. Those things are symptoms in the long run, whether we want to admit it or not, that lead to other health complications, possibly fatality. When it comes to talking about life or health, you can't just think about what's convenient. You gotta really think it out. You only have one life. You have to treat it very very carefully.

What are you doing now to make sure this is resolved? Rockets treating this as a redshirt year?

I don't think it's a redshirt year. I think no one knows when I'll come back or when this will be resolved. Until that happens, I'll continue to work out as I can do and do everything I can to keep myself in a place where I can be ready to come back.

If I can offer unprofessional advice, when you want to avoid triggers and if this works out, you may want to take a break from twitter. Not the outgoing messages, the incoming. I'm sure it weighs upon you.

Lets be candid, I get a lot of people that email and tweet me and say "Hey listen, I was on the edge of the bridge and I remember what you said and I called 911 and I'm getting treatment." Maybe they're full of it, maybe they're not but the point is, potentially depending on what you say, you can save a life or help someone. You have the other side of the coin, people tweet me and say "Hey, go kill yourself." I believe the only way to battle negative energy is with positive energy. I will continue to reach out to them and be positive with them because I'm sure they need it a lot more than I do. It should warn everyone, not only are these people out there but they're out there in great numbers. If anything should come from this, it's not that basketball players have mental illnesses too, it that our neighbors have mental illnesses too that we should pay attention to because they're probably out of control and undiagnosed.

Think back to a moment in basketball when you were the happiest?

That's a tough one. For me, going 31-0 at Hopkins my senior year was really special. The team went through so much adversity with people not wanting us to be successful and saying we were cheating by bringing players to the HS. That was special to me. The specialist moment was us being able to get selected on Selection Sunday for the tournament. Everybody in our conference, the coaches in our conference picked us at the bottom of the conference. We went into every game the underdog and always bet against and we found a way to pull together and coach found a way to provide a cohesive system to get to the tournament anyways, despite the doubters. That was special not only for me but for Ames and my team especially.

Is basketball a safe place for you when you're on the court?

Oh yeah. I played basketball since I was 5. Routine and consistency is big for people with anxiety and a basketball court is as routine as it gets for me.

Your best moments were about how they involved this external negativity in HS and college. You talked about how your teams were able to turn that into a positive and use basketball to help you through that. Not a question, just striking and interesting.

For me, I find joy in seeing others happy and seeing others fill that personal sense of achievement but within the collective. The only real gift I got from basketball is that the sense of teamwork and camaraderie. That's universal. Not about the sport but life. That's something I appreciate. Not only the team but the community. In Ames, that was huge. The community was experiencing something you could see and feel. That's special to me.

Also fun to dunk on someone too right?

Yeah, and talk a little trash and stick your tongue out and wear a red mo-hawk and act crazy. Yeah, that's all fun too.

We wish you the best of luck.

Thank you guys. #BeWell.

 

I never said he shouldn't be seeking treatment, or that his condition is not real. I also dont think he shouldn't be campaigning for mental health awareness. I said it myself that I believe its a huge issue. I think you misunderstood my rant as if it was directed at everyone with a mental illness.

My issue is with him taking zero accountability for his actions, and instead blackmailing others who do not comply with what he believes is best for himself. There is no need for him to try and justify everything he does so much publicly, and constantly glorify his disorders as if they were patches on his boy scout sachel.

He has made himself, and his cause look like a total scam. Which is something I hate because it underminds the ability he would have had to actually do good with his cause in the future.

Also the Rockets already look stupid for drafting him, not because of his mental health issues, but his past in the way he has handled situations before. People can grow up and change over time, but it doesn't happen overnight. They should been much more cautious with a personality like Royce(not necessarily with a player that has a mental illness).

Which comes back to my point... he can't keep on hiding behind his mental illness to excuse the way he treats authority and others around him.

 

Uhhh no he isn't very clear.

He's asking for his doctors to have executive decision making authority which the team/league will never agree to.

He want's carte blanch to do what ever he wants as long as he has a doctors note and for doctors to be able to dictate basketball decisions based on his "condition." Never happening.

 

So what are you suggesting? What is White demanding that the Rockets have t granted that you think is reasonable? They already got him a damn bus for chrissakes! So you think he can decide which games to play in and practices to go to in case of a panic attack?

I have been saying this since the very first White bus thread- the Rockets should have been more firm with White from the beginning. No bus, no special rules, nada and then let White decide if he wants to play in the nba. That was truly Whites only chance at truly beating his mental health issues and having an nba career. Oh we'll, both parties failed here.

 

Royce is fine with using the Rockets' doctor though. The team's own doctor would have to say that it's unsafe for him to go to the D-League. (A) I don't think Royce is doing this to avoid the D-League. (B) I don't think the Rockets' own doctors would ever say that it's unsafe for him to go to the D-League. (C) If the Rockets' own doctors do say that it's unsafe for him to go to the D-League, why should someone that knows little about mental health be able to over rule the doctors that are experts?

I think everyone is making way too much out of this idea that he's trying to get the doctors to demand that he stays with the Rockets and gets a certain amount of playing time. That wouldn't ever happen. No doctor (especially one working for the team) would ever recommend, much less demand, that. White is just trying to protect himself from the Rockets forcing him, through the threat of fines, to do something that the Rockets own doctors disagree with. It's probably not a situation that would ever come up with this organization because they've always seemed very fair with players, but White may not be aware of the Rockets history with that and there are definitely sports organizations that do put their players in unnecessary risks.

 

Well surprisingly I didn't get as annoyed as I thought I would.

I mean at the very least I give the man some credit for having noble ambitions that he sincerly sticks by. The unfortunate thing is that he is just lost in a world that most people cannot understand or relate to.

It's disappointing for the rockets as a fan that he can't get it together to get on the court and it seems a shame he can't eco his advocacy to the people he really wants to target.

 

A whole lotta words to say nothing more than what he has on twitter. Closest White has come to a detail:

You can substitute "moving" with "playing" or "practice" to get an idea of what he wants.

We want to think he is being clear, but White is sweeping a lot of things under the rubric of "medical decisions." On the surface, his request is reasonable. Then you notice how he won't move past the vague terminology to a specific detail. There could be no end to White expanding what constitutes a medical decision. In theory, with a mental illness, everything from the cut of his jersey to court time to arena lighting could be construed as a mental health risk/trigger.

The Rockets are not gonna overrule his medical prescriptions. The most they can do is ask him to see the team doctor, if he cannot/will not report for work. But White wants to expand the medical portion to the way the team manages its basketball operations. No team is gonna hand over control over their daily operations to any doctor beyond what is currently done for debilitating injury.

White might want to upgrade his personal therapist...

 

This is almost exactly what Dr. Drew stated months ago, that this was actually the proper treatment for Royce.

http://hangtime.blogs.nba.com/2012/10/10/dr-drew-talks-royce-white-video/

Im not a doctor by any stretch, but it seems like the Rockets failed right from the start by doing what I myself thought that they should have done to handle the situation.

From a legal perspective, I understood what they were doing to accomodate to avoid getting shanked by litigation, but you were right that it set an exteremly bad precident, and right or wrong destroyed their investment they had in him as a basketball player.

 

How is that not clear? It sounds like you summed up exactly what he wants in your 2nd sentence. You could very well be right that it will never happen. I never said that I thought it would/should happen, just clarifying that he is asking for something very specific and that it's atleast understandable that he wants that.

 

White is just being OCD. He wants control and a "plan" gives him that. This has been covered by at least one journalist that knows him.

Dude has to face that the uncertainty of playing time, going to the DL, etc. is just a part of the NBA. The answer isn't a side agreement in which the team lets a doc have say over basketball. The answer is what poster Bill Bradley has been saying all along: White needs to get healthy. The patient has to want to help himself. No more changing the whole world for what White fears might happen. Confront and deal.

 

I am pretty sure White wants to be treated as a day to day injured player. At any time, before any game or practice he wants the doctor to be able to say: listen, it is better if Royce sits this one out or doesn't go on this road trip. And since his disorder seems to be not treatable he probably wants this for the rest of his career...

I'm not even saying that is unreasonable - if he is as sick as I start to believe he is, it is probably very reasonable. It's just not practicable for a NBA team - you are paying a guy millions and never know when you can count in him. And it will be hard for his teammates to accept, that he always gets a special treatment.

Right now Royce has to find out, if he is healthy enough to play in this league - and he will have to start to trust the Rockets organization a little, that they won't do anything major that might hurt his health.

 

Royce's Doctor

 

But it doesn't matter what WHITE considers unsafe. The Rockets' own DOCTORS would have to say something like Royce not playing a certain amount of minutes is unsafe for him. Surely neither you, nor Royce, or the Rockets management ever think the doctors would do that, right? His contention is that the Rockets can overrule their own doctors. I just can't fathom that the team doctors would ever demand NBA playing time or staying away from Rio Grande Valley as a treatment for anxiety. The most I could ever seem them saying is that it's okay for him to miss a game or practice here or there and possibly giving him a set schedule in advance for when he's going between the Vipers and Rockets. Maybe I'm just underestimating what White could talk the doctors into, but that kinda stuff doesn't seem likely to me.

 

Must spread rep.

The devil is in the [unspoken] details.

 

Thanks for that, but it was incredibly boring. Same old crap from Royce.

Doesn't he get tired of himself?

 

The real issue here is simple:

His condition is too serious for him to be able to play in the NBA. No "reasonable" accomodations would be good enough to allow him to function. The things he would ask for naturally will move into the unreasonable requests range.

This is what Royce does not get and why his crusade is completely misdirected. Whether he gets assigned to the RGV is NOT a medical decision. His doctors can of course give advice but thats about it.

 

Doesn't matter about what we can fathom. White, at the very least, wants the theoretical possibility that the doctors can recommend those things, something the Rockets must not give in to, even in theory.

You keep thinking of how innocuous giving in can be. The Rockets did that with the bus. Now the team has to be defensive with this character and consider just how far he might keep pushing.

Moreover, consider that the man-child is just plain ole mentally ill. His little crusade is likely an outgrowth of his illness(es). It seems he is being OCD about having a written plan the team cannot diverge from in any way. The Rox cannot do business like that.

 

Your girlfriend's brother has anxiety for extremely loud places, so I assume he avoids places like clubs instead of go to a club and demand everybody inside to be quite. Right?

What White does here is he knew NBA requires frequent flying and maybe not suitable for his medical conditions. But somehow he entered the draft willingly, got drafted, signed a guaranteed contract first, then asked for bus and "protocols" to change rules just benefits himself.

To me it looks more like a fraud than medical reasons.