You almost could start seeing that train coming down the tracks. The stories got wilder and wilder with Eddie Griffin. one night, and after that, a crazy car accident while watching a dirty movie in his SUV. There was an assault at a gas station in Houston at 3 a.m. When the Rockets gave up in 2004, the Nets signed him for a month before that experiment fell apart when Griffin wouldn't stop pounding on the hotel door of a bride and groom whose wedding he crashed at a North Jersey hotel. There was a beating and a shooting of a woman at his Houston home, and that was that as the future franchise star for Houston. There always was someone to pick up Griffin, always someone to believe that they could find the doctors to treat him, the mentors to reach him. Despite getting thrown out of high school, despite chasing a Seton Hall teammate to the halftime locker room and slugging him in the eye for freezing him out – despite it all – the Houston Rockets still traded three first-round draft picks to the New Jersey Nets for the rights to the seventh pick in the 2001 draft.Įverything about Griffin suggested that he was destined to be a bust, but his promise intoxicated Rudy Tomjanovich. Griffin knew his talent tantalized people and fooled them as long as he could. He gave him a locker next to Kevin Garnett and tutored Griffin himself, but his unmoved student never had a love for the game to ultimately fight for a career. He believed in the sweetness that could be found free of the bottle with Griffin. McHale had made Griffin his personal project. The NBA suspended him for violating its drug policy midway through last season, and finally Minnesota Timberwolves president Kevin McHale stopped believing he could salvage Griffin's career, his life. He fought moods and depression and booze. They had to chase down dental records to confirm Griffin, 25, had been the driver with a death wish.įrom someone who knew him well Tuesday night, his was a belief there was a "strong possibility" that this was exactly how poor, tortured Eddie Griffin chose to end it all. The flames burned him beyond recognition. "When I watched him this season," one general manager told me on draft day in 2001, "the court always looked like the last place he wanted to be."Īll the sadness and confusion over his five torturous seasons in the NBA chased him to his final moments Friday in Houston, when Griffin barreled through a blinking warning and a barrier and exploded his SUV into a moving freight train. For all the sheer talent within those 6 feet, 10 inches, Eddie Griffin never was wired to be a basketball star. Never peace.įor all his great promise, there always was greater disappointment. For all the Father's best intentions and blessings, there never was salvation for this lost soul.
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