Basketball Junkie

I received this book through Goodreads First Reads and was excited to be able to read it.

That feeling, however, was short lived.

The underlying theme and purpose of the book had a ton of potential. Chris Herren goes through his professional basketball career as an absolute junkie, to the detriment of his family and his coaches. The book explains the timelines of events from when he started doping and drinking to when he finally decided to put his family first.

First of all, let me say, I am extremely proud of Chris for finally realizing his problem and doing something about it. I hope, for his sake and his familys' sake that he is still living life sober and telling others what he went through. That being said, the book is forgettable on a couple of levels.

Basically this was a timeline of events and occurances. There was no dialogue, no mention of what he was going through inside of his head during his lowest points--only that he was detoxing and sweating and crying...it was just surface facts of what he went through. There were few quotes from coaches or family, but no conversations. The author speaks about his wife and how she was strong, but doesn't offer much else to the relationship between the two of them. Why did she stay? How did she try to help? I can understand that being a junkie/druggie, you push everyone important to you away. I get that...but there has to be more to this story and more about the addiction and absolutely more about the process of recovery. There needs to be more to capture and motivate. The book doesn't delve into the depths of what he had to go through in rehab or with his family. Being an outsider isn't enough.

I understand the several grammatical errors, since this was an uncorrected version and the sentence structure/paragraph structure left something to be desired. I would honestly love to read the finished product to see how it changes. I know it has the ability to be a great memoir that can teach people about coping with recovery if the author would open up. After all, he obviously wants the story out there for the world to see. Make it real...make it honest. I know there was more to the experience of the whole thing than this.

Rating: 2