Two taps to the head
October 24, 2018 5:11 PM Subscribe
What the hell happened to Darius Miles? I know dudes like me aren’t supposed to talk about depression, but I’ll talk about it. If a real motherfucker like me can struggle with it, then anybody can struggle with it.
Yeah I’m not much of a sports fan and never heard of Darius Miles, let alone wondered what happened to him, but that was a great read.
posted by rodlymight at 7:19 PM on October 24, 2018 [4 favorites]
posted by rodlymight at 7:19 PM on October 24, 2018 [4 favorites]
> After the funeral, I was supposed to clean out [my mother's] house, and I just couldn’t do it. I didn’t leave her house for an entire year. I never made it past the front yard, for real. I just didn’t have the will to do anything. I went Zero Dark Thirty on everybody. I wasn’t answering anybody’s texts. I wasn’t even answering Qs texts. And it wasn’t like people weren’t trying to help me, but I didn’t want the help. I was just … gone.
My mother died a couple years back and I can completely sympathize with "I was supposed to clean out her place and I just stayed there for a year under a black cloud of depression". I took about a month before a family friend who'd done estate sales stepped in and dealt with it for me. I was in no damn shape for dealing with it. Nobody is unless maybe they have a very fucked-up history with their parents.
posted by egypturnash at 7:47 PM on October 24, 2018 [8 favorites]
My mother died a couple years back and I can completely sympathize with "I was supposed to clean out her place and I just stayed there for a year under a black cloud of depression". I took about a month before a family friend who'd done estate sales stepped in and dealt with it for me. I was in no damn shape for dealing with it. Nobody is unless maybe they have a very fucked-up history with their parents.
posted by egypturnash at 7:47 PM on October 24, 2018 [8 favorites]
That was fantastic.
posted by ChuraChura at 4:26 AM on October 25, 2018
posted by ChuraChura at 4:26 AM on October 25, 2018
From the headline on, this article was seemingly written for me. Thank you so much! DMiles!!
posted by riverlife at 8:04 AM on October 25, 2018
posted by riverlife at 8:04 AM on October 25, 2018
Everybody showed us love.
Editor’s note: Everybody.
Word.
posted by chavenet at 9:24 AM on October 25, 2018 [3 favorites]
Editor’s note: Everybody.
Word.
posted by chavenet at 9:24 AM on October 25, 2018 [3 favorites]
i do not do sports and have no idea who that person is. but i read every word of the article and enjoyed it and he sounds like a solid guy and i wish him the best.
posted by misanthropicsarah at 10:29 AM on October 25, 2018 [2 favorites]
posted by misanthropicsarah at 10:29 AM on October 25, 2018 [2 favorites]
You could also add an NBA tag, Horace Rumpole. I love that more and more players are talking about depression.
On a completely other note, I watched him and Quentin Richardson in the NBA for years doing the post title after dunks. When I later learned that was for "Knuckleheads" I was so sad I never figured that out.
posted by cashman at 3:04 PM on October 25, 2018
On a completely other note, I watched him and Quentin Richardson in the NBA for years doing the post title after dunks. When I later learned that was for "Knuckleheads" I was so sad I never figured that out.
posted by cashman at 3:04 PM on October 25, 2018
Darius Miles is pretty much the poster child for the end of straight to high school players. It took some time, but through no fault of his own, he pretty much exemplified the problem of bringing an 18 year old kid into a life of utter excess, with day one coworkers ten years older.
Rather than try to fix the problem (expecting 18 year olds who've just won the lottery) by providing mentorship and guidance, the NBA punted and told everyone they had to go to at least one year (really, just enough of a year to maintain eligibility for sports) of college, hoping that would somehow be enough.
In the current day NBA, it seems there are allowances for providing mentorship, for guidance, for getting young players the information they need to keep their head above water. Miles never got that (being drafted by Sterling's Clippers surely didn't help) and was out of the league when most players are beginning to just hit their prime.
It's a weirdly depressing game, thinking about players from ten or twenty years ago, and how they would have fit the modern game so perfectly, but the league wasn't ready for them. Rudy Gay was a name I heard mentioned, how he'd be a perfect small ball power forward now, rather than being molded into the mid range jump shooting small forward he was for most of his career.
Those Clippers, though? In today's game they would have been amazing. And by today's game, I mean the care players give to training and conditioning, the ways franchises (some, at least, and usually the successful ones) nurture their younger players (not to be naive, they do it because it's an investment, they're just better at taking care of their investments now). But those players, Miles, Richardson, Magette, Piatkowski, they would have been perfect for the switching/positionless basketball they were just too early for.
I'm glad to see Miles managed to come out of it okay. I would have loved to see what could have been.
posted by Ghidorah at 5:17 AM on October 26, 2018 [2 favorites]
Rather than try to fix the problem (expecting 18 year olds who've just won the lottery) by providing mentorship and guidance, the NBA punted and told everyone they had to go to at least one year (really, just enough of a year to maintain eligibility for sports) of college, hoping that would somehow be enough.
In the current day NBA, it seems there are allowances for providing mentorship, for guidance, for getting young players the information they need to keep their head above water. Miles never got that (being drafted by Sterling's Clippers surely didn't help) and was out of the league when most players are beginning to just hit their prime.
It's a weirdly depressing game, thinking about players from ten or twenty years ago, and how they would have fit the modern game so perfectly, but the league wasn't ready for them. Rudy Gay was a name I heard mentioned, how he'd be a perfect small ball power forward now, rather than being molded into the mid range jump shooting small forward he was for most of his career.
Those Clippers, though? In today's game they would have been amazing. And by today's game, I mean the care players give to training and conditioning, the ways franchises (some, at least, and usually the successful ones) nurture their younger players (not to be naive, they do it because it's an investment, they're just better at taking care of their investments now). But those players, Miles, Richardson, Magette, Piatkowski, they would have been perfect for the switching/positionless basketball they were just too early for.
I'm glad to see Miles managed to come out of it okay. I would have loved to see what could have been.
posted by Ghidorah at 5:17 AM on October 26, 2018 [2 favorites]
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