I’m trying to figure out why the pitfalls and tragedies of athletes maintain such a magnetism over me—and likely many of you based on the numerous 30 for 30’s about athletes who had it all, only to succumb to some external or internal pressure. Drugs, alcohol, mental illness … or some combination of the three make powerfully attractive stories to me, but not in the can’t-turn-away-from-a-car-wreck-Britney-Spears way, rather in a way where the descent is so obvious and visibly painful and yet inevitable; it doesn’t cease until death or rock bottom. Somewhere on the way down that long elevator ride towards rock bottom or death is the frighteningly long, still-standing figure of the bald Keon Clark: bags under his eyes, dressed in an Illinois Department of Corrections orange jumpsuit that’s too big and baggy for a frame that remains slight despite years of abuse with pants too short for his pencil-thin, abnormally long legs. He stands there, his thoughts impenetrable, a lifetime of substance abuse, crime, wasted opportunity … waste in more ways than one going down down down to the Illinois State Prison system for the next eight years. And that saddens me. Not because Clark was a folk hero nor had elements of subversive cool, but in a sad way like, “Why’d it have to happen?”
For those too young or too foggy to remember the pogo stick that was Keon Clark, I can tell you he was a center/power forward who embodied the basketball description of long. His arms like skinny boa constrictors hung down from broad shoulders, his slender fingers and hands adept at blocking shots with regularity. He spent six years in the league as an effective reserve specializing in blocking shots and occasionally posterizing a would-be defender. Think of him as an on-court precursor to Javale McGee, but where McGee is harmlessly playful, Clark was painfully addicted. Sometime around 2004 things went awry. At the tender age of 28, when most players are stepping into their prime, Clark disappeared from the basketball planet.
A short review of his rap sheet, comprehensively chronicled by Mark Deeks from Shamsports.com, is numbing in the sense that after a while you begin to gloss over the speeding and drinking citations and look for outliers like weapons charges and domestic disputes. Deeks writes that Clark’s arrests number, “somewhere in or near the fifties.” In 2007, Clark claimed in an interview that he “never played a game sober.” Alcohol was his most frequent vice, but looking through his arrests, marijuana, cocaine and eventually weapons kept him plenty of company over the years.
I want to be able to see Clark as a tragic soul, an addict who happened to be able to play basketball and likely had his lifestyle enabled by booming paychecks and the inconsistency of living a life in and out of hotel rooms, on the road in cities that don’t sleep. In a recent interview, a five-month sober Clark said as much himself:
The money, the fame, the fact that I was on TV. People think money will make your life better. Money didn’t dissolve my problems. It increased them. I was already on a destructive path. What happened was people looked at me, and they saw my persona. What they put on me was not me. You can’t live up to something you’re not. … Nobody cares about your problems. Everybody diminished my problems, including myself.
But I’m either making it too complex, or just haven’t yet found my definitive answer. Once an athlete exits the mainstream consciousness and exists as a player-page on basketball-reference or the answer to Aflac trivia questions, what do they become? And what if the athlete who we showered with both praise and boos falls on hard times? Do we wait for the “Where are they now?” stories or seek the validation of a 30 for 30 documentary so we can say, “Oh, he was really fucked up?” I’m not questing after a right or wrong or concrete absolutes, but rather struggling to resolve the dehumanization (or something like it) that feels so prevalent in our third person relationships with pro athletes. We know athletes are treated like replaceable machinery. Just look at the NFL, which spent millions of dollars trying to prove football didn’t cause brain injuries. And even with this knowledge, football players are willing to take the risk to play the game. Basketball players will play through ankle and knee injuries; baseball players through elbow and shoulder injuries. Of course, the “play through the pain” mentality is something drilled into athletes from a young age, but why do we continue to subject ourselves to this abuse?
Culturally, we deify our athletes, and the better you are, the more you get. Popularity, respect, attention, perks, swag, grades, girls, money, clout, connections. Athletes, from a young age, are privileged. An extreme example would be the Steubenville rape case which, over time, has revealed attempts by grown adults, teachers and coaches to cover up evidence of a rape committed by Steubenville football players. It’s not even a question of, “what kind of message are we sending to our kids,” but more like, “What the fuck is wrong with the adults?”
You’re everything … until someone else shows up. Maybe it’s someone who can sell more shoes or generate more ratings. We’re a fickle audience, dependent on narratives that allow us to escape from our daily monotonies. We prefer that the sad stuff is relegated to a footnote. Len Bias is immortal because he would’ve joined forces with the great Larry Bird and it’s easier for us to build a narrative on the shoulders on what could have been. Meanwhile, Eddie Griffin is just a forgotten kid who played hoops well, but is often confused for a short comedian. Michael Ray Richardson is the poster boy for 80s cocaine abuse and has the lifetime ban to prove it, but he also has a documentary narrated by Chris Rock called Whatever Happened to Michael Ray? Keon Clark is just a has-been rotation player who’s been arrested more times than he has years on earth.
This unnatural approach to sports seems to create this comfortable sense of detachment that I’m only able to hazily pinpoint. Pro sports are a bizarre spectacle and God have mercy on you if you’re prone to its temptations. Keon Clark’s first arrest was at 16; he was an obvious candidate to end up in this situation, but how many coaches or teachers let him slide by because he was a talented athlete? How many people enabled his destructive behaviors? You can read Clark’s comments above, “You can’t live up to something you’re not. Nobody cares about your problems. Everybody diminished my problems, including myself,” and interpret them on a broad spectrum that includes self-pity at one end and society’s problem at the other end. The truth likely lies in the middle of that spectrum. Clark has clearly wrestled with demons and most addicts become adept at lying or preying on the sympathy of others in order to protect their precious vices. But did basketball do anything to stop or slow down that inevitable descent to rock bottom? Looking at that arrest record, I’d almost say it only delayed the inevitable.
I’m not calling on fans to adopt retired athletes or for pensions to include substance abuse and mental health support (although that seems like it’d be a good idea). Rather, I’m continuing to try and process where I/we stand on this whole fan/blogger/writer/journalist observing and relating with athletes/former athletes/struggling former athletes. In the meantime, I’ll continue to feel bummed about the lanky tragedy of Keon Clark and see him donning that bright orange prison garb that can’t possibly fit the odd dimensions of his frame. I’ll imagine him laid out on that much-too-small prison cot, confined to a much-too-small cell, and hoping that his eight years, or whatever he ends up serving, are his rock bottom instead of a prelude to a relapsing death.
