Eddie Griffin's Death a Suicide?

[Now_Im_Not_Banned]

The tortured soul of Eddie Griffin
 
By Adrian Wojnarowski, Yahoo! Sports
August 22, 2007

Seven years ago, the priest talking on the telephone insisted that he had done his best to spare a young basketball star, Eddie Griffin, a tumultuous tomorrow. Three weeks until graduation at Roman Catholic in Philadelphia, and the No. 1 high school player in America had flipped out in a lunch room fistfight. The principal, Rev. Paul Brant, expelled him, assigning Griffin a home tutor for his final assignments.

"What if we hadn't done it?" Father Brant told me then. "That was my biggest concern. If we hadn't let him know he had to take responsibility for his actions, later in life when he became a pro athlete, what would happen when he was faced with circumstances where he had to be accountable?"

For all the Father's best intentions and blessings, there never was salvation for this lost soul. Never peace.

For all his great promise, there always was greater disappointment. For all the sheer talent within those 6 feet, 10 inches, Eddie Griffin never was wired to be a basketball star.
 
"When I watched him this season," one general manager told me on draft day in 2001, "the court always looked like the last place he wanted to be."

All the sadness and confusion over his five torturous seasons in the NBA chased him to his final moments Friday in Houston, when Griffin barreled through a blinking warning and a barrier and exploded his SUV into a runaway freight train. The flames burned him beyond recognition. They had to chase down dental records to confirm Griffin, 25, had been the driver with a death wish.

From someone who knew him well Tuesday night, his was a belief there was a "strong possibility" that this was exactly how poor, tortured Eddie Griffin chose to end it all. He fought moods and depression and booze. The NBA suspended him for violating its drug policy midway through last season, and finally Minnesota Timberwolves president Kevin McHale stopped believing he could salvage Griffin's career, his life. He gave up, too.

McHale had made Griffin his personal project. He believed in the sweetness that could be found free of the bottle with Griffin. He gave him a locker next to Kevin Garnett and tutored Griffin himself, but his unmoved student never had a love for the game to ultimately fight for a career.

Griffin knew his talent tantalized people and fooled them as long as he could. Despite getting thrown out of high school, despite chasing a Seton Hall teammate to the halftime locker room and slugging him in the eye for freezing him out – despite it all – the Houston Rockets still traded three first-round draft picks to the New Jersey Nets for the rights to the seventh pick in the 2001 draft.

Everything about Griffin suggested that he was destined to be a bust, but his promise intoxicated Rudy Tomjanovich. There always was someone to pick up Griffin, always someone to believe that they could find the doctors to treat him, the mentors to reach him. There was a beating and a shooting of a woman at his Houston home, and that was that as the future franchise star for Houston.

When the Rockets gave up in 2004, the Nets signed him for a month before that experiment fell apart when Griffin wouldn't stop pounding on the hotel door of a bride and groom whose wedding he crashed at a North Jersey hotel. There was an assault at a gas station in Houston at 3 a.m. one night, and after that, a crazy car accident while watching a dirty movie in his SUV. The stories got wilder and wilder with Eddie Griffin. You almost could start seeing that train coming down the tracks.

"Alcohol always got in the way," Rusty Hardin, his attorney, told the Houston Chronicle Tuesday night.

Around the NBA this summer, there was no one trying to sign Eddie Griffin. He was 25 years old, out of chances, and there was Eddie Griffin on the 5300 block of Lawndale in the darkness of a Houston night. He crashed through those blinking red lights, the lowered barrier, and maybe this was how it always was going to end for this poor, tortured soul. Yes, that train had been thundering down the tracks.
 

[R-Tistic]

That is sad as hell. I really can't say he tried to do it, but who really knows.

That would be a depressing movie though

[thisoneguy360]

Damn 

[Don Jacob]

wow.

[Now_Im_Not_Banned]

This story says he was tryna get his life back together in his final days...


Griffin 'upbeat' in final weeks
Agent: Former Wolf was rebuilding life

BY RICK ALONZO
Pioneer Press
Article Last Updated: 08/23/2007 12:23:58 AM CDT

In his final days, former Timberwolves forward Eddie Griffin was getting his life together and he showed interest in reviving his basketball career overseas, one of his agents said Wednesday.

But Griffin's death early Friday in Houston raises questions, including why he disregarded warning signs and drove his sport utility vehicle through a railroad arm and into the side of a moving train. The 25-year-old who had battled alcohol issues and legal trouble died at the scene of the fiery crash.

A spokeswoman for the Harris County, Texas, medical examiner's office said Wednesday that the manner and cause of death, including toxicology results, are pending.

According to agent Jeff Wernick, who worked closely with Griffin for six years, Griffin was trying to put the pieces back together after being waived by the Wolves in March. He had been working through issues with the mother of his young daughter, and was exploring the possibility of playing in Europe next season.

"I would say that the shock was exacerbated by the fact that there really were no signs" of problems, Wernick said. "All of our conversations in recent weeks were terrific. They were upbeat. At this stage, I'm not even sure what the heck happened. Certainly there was nothing in our communication from everything I know of what was going on in Houston that would have pointed to anything untoward."

That Griffin's spirits had improved contrasts the mood Griffin felt, according to Timberwolves vice

president of basketball operations Kevin McHale, when he was waived by the Wolves in March. The NBA suspended Griffin for five games in January for violating the league's anti-drug program, the latest setback in a tumultuous career.
McHale said Griffin had fought demons and been provided counseling during his tenure in Minnesota. But McHale also stressed Griffin was a good person with the right intentions. Griffin wanted to do the right thing, McHale said. That included asking for and receiving the medication Antabuse, which causes a person to become ill if they drink alcohol while taking the medication.

But Griffin's suspension was a sign that he had suffered a setback. Griffin apparently also wanted a change in his career, McHale said.

"It was the fact that he was cycling down into a bad, bad spot," McHale said of the team's decision to release Griffin. "One of the conversations he said to me was, 'I've got to go. It's not healthy for me right now here. It's just not working. I'm in a bad spot,' and a lot of things like that. I knew he was starting to drink again and turn to some of that stuff."

Said Wernick: "I obviously wasn't privy to any private conversations Eddie and Kevin had. It's a really fine line and a difficult distinction to draw between frustrations between his playing situation and what he may have described as personal issues. At no time did we (Griffin's representation) or me personally know of any personal issues that would have led him to share those feelings with Kevin."

Griffin was at the bottom of the depth chart his final season with the team, playing in just 13 games.

McHale said he felt Griffin would be better served by being in Houston with John Lucas, a longtime mentor and counselor to Griffin. That never happened. Lucas said he last spoke with Griffin in March.

Still, Griffin's outlook was improving, Wernick said. Griffin had been working out trying to get back in shape. Wernick said playing overseas in Europe could have been a steppingstone back to the NBA for Griffin. It also could have provided time away from the microscope he was under.

A civil suit filed against Griffin stemming from a March 2006 car crash in Minneapolis remains pending, and Griffin's camp is still involved in arbitration with the Wolves regarding the final season of his contract, Wernick said.

Wernick said he couldn't comment on Griffin's alcohol issues at the time of his release because it's part of the arbitration.

Asked whether more could have been done to help Griffin, Wernick said it would be inappropriate to second-guess the teams he played for or the NBA.

"I know everyone who worked with Eddie did everything they felt was appropriate to help him deal with the things that came up in his life," Wernick said.

Griffin is survived by a 3-year-old daughter and was a "doting father," Wernick said. Griffin had been working on his relationship with his daughter's mother, Jessica Jimenez.

"He had an up-and-down relationship with Jessica over the years," Wernick said. "To be honest, the most recent conversations I had had with him, and asked him how everything was going, he had said fine. While he was very circumspect in talking about his personal affairs, he was honest. When he told me things were OK, I trusted him."

[Fatdodger]

Damn