Great/sad ESPN Mother's Day story

I don't think I've read much by Chris Palmer, but I like Chris Andersen, so I clicked on the story.

Great read.

Tireless research and fantastic quotes. I think hre doesn't quote Andersen until the very end, but it completely works.

I love when ESPN does these holiday stories - Wright Thompson's on Father's Day last year was my favorite story...ever... - and this one is very good.

http://sports.espn.go.com/nba/news/story?page=Andersen-080511

 

Well-worth the read.

But this line kinda bothered me, and it's such a throwaway:

An improbable journey from the backwoods of Texas, where kids are more likely to get hooked on meth than play AAU ball, had reached its end point.

 

Because you don't think it's true?

 

Frankly, the story doesn't leave me with much sympathy for either son or mother: Andersen's problems, portrayed as usual in a 'struggling-athlete-battles-his-demons' story as more or less random acts of God which unexpectedly derailed his career completely out of the blue, were all the result of his own drug-taking stupidity, and Mom just seems to be pissed her golden goose ain't laying no eggs.

: :

 

Couldn't it at least have specifically mentioned what drugs he used? Wasn't it heroin? I just thought that detail was pretty important in this story.

 

It's never been 100 pct proven/admitted what drugs he was taking.

 

In the long run, meth might be better for a kid than AAU ball.

 

If you're going to do all of that reporting wouldn't that be one of the biggies you'd want to find out?

I'm not knocking this story. I just don't like these redemption stories when they don't give the full side to things. There's no need to sanitize the story; just tell it and I'll decide how I feel about it. This just read like "old Birdman sure was eccentric but he had no control over everyone who was hanging on and making him do dumb, self-destructive things."

 

If Andersen isn't talking, there is no way to know what he was taking. I'm not even sure if the teams find out.

 

OK, well my more general critique still stands. This seemed unnecessarily glossy.