(2/2) When he was traded to the Knicks - that was my first year living in New York.
I felt like we were on similar paths and felt it was destiny that I was in NY at the same time he was. MJ was the hero of the basketball world, but Steph was supposed to be my hero.
In NY, I didn’t have TV, I saw games in bars but wasn’t really paying attention. So I ended up paying way more attention to the headlines in the news than I did the actual person.
And watching the headlines...when stuff started going downhill...it was all bad. Being that he was my basketball hero, I felt like he betrayed me. Personally. Like I had such high hopes for him and all of the headlines said all these negative things and I really just kinda tuned out. I watched him lose his mind on justintv while I was sitting at my desk in 2009 and basically swore off him forever.
After that, I heard he moved to China and won a bunch of CBA championships. I heard he retired a couple of years ago. I started following him on IG and was turned off by, what I felt like, was the incessant need to remind people of his accomplishments. I unfollowed quickly after.
A few months ago I stumbled on a documentary on Netflix called ‘A Kid from Coney Island’. I added it to my list and figured I’d watch it when I couldn’t find anything else to watch. Well, that day came the other day. And I sat and watched the documentary...reliving my early adulthood through the eyes of his family and friends and I wanted to cry. Seriously. It just made me sad as all hell.
It’s one thing to lose a hero. It’s another thing to realize you lost your hero to some shit you weren’t even paying that much attention to because you made a false judgement based on someone else’s agenda. It opened my eyes to his struggle and how blind and ignorant I was to his plight. It’s a stark reminder that no matter how much we think we know about someone or something...we really just don’t know.
If you’ve ever had an interest in Steph...if you’ve ever had a negative thought about how his NBA career transpired - take a look at that documentary. You might just change your mind…( @starburymarbury *followed)