Great and sad read at the same time. http://sports.espn.go.com/nba/news/story?id=2989025 HOUSTON -- Eddie Griffin was going to give it one more shot, channeling all that talent back into a once-lucrative basketball career. The fights, the arrests and most of all the alcoholism all seemed behind him as he worked his way back into playing shape in Houston this summer. Many reached out to help him before and failed. Now, he was ready to show them all he could beat his addiction and succeed on his own. The Minnesota Timberwolves had cut him in March, but maybe he could still become the superstar many projected him to be when he was drafted seventh overall in the 2001 draft. In the end, Griffin couldn't outrun his demons, dying alone in a horrific traffic accident that sadly fit the other chapters of his troubled life. Griffin was killed Aug. 17 when he drove his sport utility vehicle around a flashing gate at a railroad crossing and crashed into a passing freight train about 1:30 a.m. The SUV burst into flames and Griffin's body was burned beyond recognition. Authorities finally identified Griffin through dental records. Toxicology reports are still pending, but those who know Griffin are assuming the worst -- that he went on one final drinking binge before the fatal drive. "Eddie wanted to do the right thing, he truly wanted to," said Kevin McHale, the Timberwolves' vice president of basketball operations. "He could for a while and then things would happen in his life off the court or even on the court. His coping skills were not what they needed to be." Griffin appeared in just 13 games with the Timberwolves last season, and none after Dec. 13. He pleaded guilty earlier in the season to inattentive driving after hitting a parked car while out late one night in Minneapolis. He was suspended by the NBA in January for five games for violating the anti-drug program and Minnesota waived him on March 13. McHale said Griffin begged for help during his three seasons in Minnesota and even started taking Anabuse, a drug that makes alcoholics violently ill when they drink. But he admitted to McHale at one point that he was losing his battle. "One of the conversations, Eddie said to me was 'I've gotta go. It's not healthy for me right now here,'" McHale said. "'It's not working. I'm in a bad spot.'" McHale recommended that Griffin seek more help from former NBA player and coach John Lucas, who runs a program that specializes in helping former players with drug and alcohol addiction. Lucas enrolled Griffin in 2005 and Griffin successfully completed a six-month program, Lucas said, prompting the Wolves to offer him a contract extension. This time, Griffin turned down Lucas' help, saying he was ready to get on with his life on his own. And that's not what Lucas wanted to hear. "In my business, that's not a good sign, it's a form of isolation," said Lucas. "If you isolate yourself, you forget where you've come from. You remember the sad things and sad times. You become your own worst enemy." Griffin found more trouble not long after the Wolves released him. On April 7, Griffin was charged with misdemeanor assault after an altercation with another man inside the house where Griffin lived with Jessica Jimenez, the mother of their now-3-year-old daughter. Griffin had a second brush with the law just seven weeks later, arrested again on a misdemeanor assault charge after a fight with his brother, Jacques. Griffin's attorney Derek Hollingsworth described the incidents as "misunderstandings" and said both charges were dismissed in July. Hollingsworth said that was the last time he spoke with Griffin, who gave no indication that he was drinking again. "I think it's always hard with anybody who has an alcohol problem, to tell if they turned the corner," Hollingsworth said. "But Eddie appeared to be in good shape, he was coherent, he made all of his appointments with me. Those are things that people who've turned the corner do. "At the same time, when someone is suffering from alcoholism, it's always hard to tell what's going on in the dark hours of the night," he said. Others also say Griffin seemed to be trying to get back on track. He moved to Houston after the Timberwolves cut him and began working out in June with Hall of Famer Calvin Murphy, a former Rocket. Murphy runs private basketball classes for about two-dozen players of various skill levels and ages, from prepsters to professionals. Murphy described Griffin as a model student, always on time for his daily 90-minute workouts and dedicated to improving. Griffin told Murphy that he had contacted the Denver Nuggets about a possible workout before the upcoming season. Murphy and Wernick both said Griffin was considering playing in Europe if the NBA didn't pan out. "He was there every morning religiously," Murphy said. "And I'm telling you, when I say this guy worked hard, I couldn't have been any more pleased with his progress. He was getting better and better." But then came last Wednesday. Griffin had previously asked to move up the start time of their workout -- from 9 a.m. to 8:30 -- and Murphy called him that morning to remind him. "He said, 'Murph, I'm on my way.' But he didn't show up," Murphy said. Murphy called Griffin again later that day and then again on Thursday morning, when Griffin was absent again. None of the players at the gym had heard from Griffin, either. Two days later, all of them knew about the fiery crash at the railroad crossing in southeast Houston, but none suspected that Griffin might have been the unidentified driver pulled from the wreckage. "I have a hard time believing he, all of a sudden, had a relapse and had gone back to drinking and this had happened," Murphy said. "Based on what I had seen from him every day, he had become frenetic about getting back to the league. "I had absolutely no idea of any problems, alcohol-related or anything," he said. As much time as he spent with Griffin this summer, Murphy admits their conversations rarely strayed from basketball. Griffin was quiet, introverted and focused during their workouts. "He came to class, did what he had to do and then he went home," Murphy said. Away from basketball was where Griffin always ran into problems. In November 2003, while playing for the Rockets, Griffin was charged with aggravated assault with a deadly weapon, after a woman claiming to be his girlfriend accused him of punching her in the face and shooting a pistol at her car as she drove away. Griffin missed practices and a team flight, and the Rockets suspended him and then waived him in December 2003. New Jersey signed Griffin in January 2004 but then cut him less than two months later, when he checked into the Betty Ford Center to get treated for alcohol abuse. Attorney Rusty Hardin, who represented Griffin in the 2003 assault case, said the Nets found a one-night hotel bill where Griffin had ordered 22 drinks up to his room -- all for him. "He was a really, really kind, gentle soul who had an illness like, unfortunately, so many people," Hardin said. Griffin was one of the nation's top freshmen at Seton Hall in 2000-01 and left for the NBA after just one college season. Lucas said it's too simple to say Griffin was overwhelmed by having too much money and fame too soon. "He was a tremendous talent, but he didn't really love basketball that much," said Lucas, who had not spoken to Griffin since March. "He just didn't have a deep passion for it." But Queen Bowen, Griffin's mother, told The Associated Press during a telephone interview that her son was still driven to play. "Eddie is gone, and that's about all I have to say," she said. "He was a good person. He was working on getting himself together and getting back to playing ball. But he's gone now. I don't know what else to tell you."
I disagree. It is quite possible that he was killed on impact with the train and his lifeless body was burned, thus causing him no pain.
Damn, it looked like he was getting his life back together. We'll never really know what happened but it seems as if his personal problems were too much to overcome. But this makes it even more sad because it seemed he was ready to make that change and become the player he should have been.
The only thing I've ever been physically addicted to was caffeine (which I have now eliminated from my diet). I have a hard time understanding (and a hard time believing) how adults can have no control of their actions.
Great Sports Illustrated article on Eddie Griffin. http://sportsillustrated.cnn.com/2007/writers/steve_aschburner/08/22/griffin/index.html Promise unfulfilled Off-court troubles overwhelmed Griffin's big talent Posted: Wednesday August 22, 2007 4:56PM; Updated: Wednesday August 22, 2007 6:05PM Eddie Griffin spent the last three of his five NBA seasons with the Timberwolves, mixing flashes of superb play with inconsistency. Icon SMI RELATED • Eddie Griffin's career statistics A toxicology report in the coming days might provide some answers. The emergency workers at the scene and some people in the Harris County (Texas) medical examiner's office surely have their theories. But no one, maybe not even Eddie Griffin himself, could have explained his actions last week, when a moving freight train, behind crossing gates, thundered in front of his Nissan SUV about 1:30 Friday morning in southeast Houston. In an instant when Griffin simply should have just stopped and waited, he stepped on the gas. Eddie Jamal Griffin was his own worst enemy, even if he was nobody else's. A troubled young man whose alcohol addiction overran his athletic ability, Griffin never reached the potential his vast basketball skills made available to him through one year at Seton Hall and five pockmarked seasons in the NBA. He died at age 25, his vehicle bursting into flames upon impact with the freight car and Griffin's body burned so badly that investigators needed five days and a set of dental records to identify him. Griffin, the seventh pick in the 2001 draft, passed through the organizations in Houston, New Jersey and Minnesota, his career jeopardized by celebrated off-court incidents at each stop. There always was some collateral damage but, in the end, Griffin's demons were almost all self-directed. "He was a guy who nobody could really get close to,'' said former Timberwolves coach Dwane Casey, who worked with Griffin for 1½ seasons. "You wonder if you failed the kid. All the [trouble] signs were there. "I tried, from a personal standpoint even more than a basketball standpoint, to get through to him. Maybe we should have been trying to get him more help.'' By the time Griffin reached Minneapolis in 2004, he was toting a steamer trunk of turmoil: fights with teammates in high school and college, a brother's death, a shooting incident while with the Rockets, an arrest at a New Jersey hotel while property of the Nets (he never played for them). Still, the Wolves, Griffin himself and some people he trusted -- like former NBA head coach and addictions counselor John Lucas -- felt they had the knowledge to beat back his problems. The Wolves cleared a locker right next to Kevin Garnett, the team's ostensible leader and a player who had experienced some of Griffin's growing pains as an NBA teenager. They had veteran guard Sam Cassell on board -- Cassell had grown close to Griffin during offseasons in Houston -- and one of the young player's friends, Cedric Howard, moved to the Twin Cities to help Griffin navigate whatever obstacles arose. For that season, it all worked well. Griffin grabbed 18 rebounds in a game against Portland, blocked seven shots a week later against Detroit and, back home in Philadelphia, scored 27 points with 11 boards, hitting seven of his 15 three-point attempts. He averaged 7.5 points, 6.5 rebounds and 21.3 minutes in 2004-05, earning a three-year, $8.1 million deal from the Wolves. One problem: His agent negotiated the contract while Griffin was serving a 15-day jail term in Houston for violating probation from a 2003 assault case. His second season in Minnesota was spottier, the 6-foot-10 Griffin's ability to change games on defense showing up more like a tease of what could be. He ranked 10th in the NBA in blocked shots, but his scoring (4.6 ppg) and rebounding (5.6 rpg) tailed off, and of the 82 three-point shots he launched, he missed 66. Word leaked out that Griffin was, in fact, near-sighted. But he had stopped wearing contact lenses because of discomfort and never had the laser eye surgery the medical staff recommended. An even greater concern was Griffin's off-court situation. Howard was gone, back to Houston. In his place was Delton Carter -- "D.C.'' everyone calls him -- a former security and maintenance man at Houston's Westside Tennis Club who had, it turned out, precisely the wrong kind of background to be chaperoning a young guy like Griffin. Carter had served time in prison for forgery and had convictions for theft and solicitation of prostitution in his past, and had enough of a challenge just rehabbing himself. Lucas had vouched for him and, the Houston Chronicle reported in a January 2000 article, the NBA players' association had used Carter to counsel Leon Smith, the failed Dallas Mavericks preps-to-pros project. Smith was the final pick in the first round of the 1999 draft out of Chicago's Martin Luther King High, but a childhood in the inner city, shuttling through foster homes, hardly prepared him for the NBA. He clashed with a coach in his first Mavericks practice and later attempted suicide, spending a month in a Dallas psychiatric facility. He was arrested multiple times back home in Chicago and finally negotiated a buyout of his Mavs deal that has paid him $100,000 annually over 10 years. But his NBA career has been over since 2004 after brief stops in Atlanta, Milwaukee and Seattle. Red flag? Maybe it should have been. Several Wolves insiders knew of Carter's background, but either trusted Lucas or felt that someone who had stumbled could relate more directly to Griffin. But during that 2005-06 season, there were sightings of the player at bars. In March 2006, after a Wolves game, Griffin slammed his SUV into a parked vehicle while allegedly watching a pornographic DVD as he drove. Security tapes showed Griffin moments later in a convenience store, asking witnesses not to call police because he was drunk. Griffin pleaded guilty in December to inattentive driving, a petty misdemeanor. By then, Carter was gone, "disinvited'' from the Wolves. Forever a loner, Griffin never seemed to connect with Garnett or any of the other Minnesota players. Sadly, most of Griffin's value to the team was lost, too. Casey, his job at stake and desperate for frontcourt help, still reduced the player's role because he could not rely on Griffin from game to game. In January 2006, Griffin was suspended for five games for violating the NBA's anti-drug program. He didn't play after Dec. 13, didn't score a point after Nov. 17 and was waived on March 13, 2007, though the final year of his contract, pending any arbitration, is on the team's books this season at $2.9 million. "I hadn't seen a lot of Eddie since March, when Minny released him,'' Lucas said Wednesday, saying he was surprised but not shocked by Griffin's death. "Eddie was, in my mind, a kid with a lot of problems that have hurt him in his lifetime. ... But he was not a bad person. He made a lot of wrong choices.'' The first time I noticed Griffin, he was a rookie in Houston, stationed on the wing at the three-point line. Two thoughts quickly came to mind: He needs to get his butt down on the block more (but the Rockets were still playing Rudy Tomjanovich's inside-out system from the Hakeem Olajuwon era). And if this kid develops what he's already showing, a guy like Garnett is going to have his hands full in a couple of years. One of the last times I saw Griffin was in January, just before his league suspension. Lucas, making his rounds to aid his recovering players, had stopped in Minneapolis to help Griffin cope with his vanishing minutes, among other things. "[It] doesn't mean you don't work your way out. He's got to earn their trust and play his way into the rotation,'' Lucas said. "I keep telling him, 'Life is a bunch of start-overs. And then you die.' '' One start-over too few for Eddie Griffin. Steve Aschburner covered the Minnesota Timberwolves and the NBA for 13 seasons for the Minneapolis Star Tribune. He served as president of the Professional Basketball Writers Association from 2005-2007.
