PicoBlog

On June 9, 2020, Rex Chapman sent me a text message letting me know he was going to be interviewed by Stephanie Rhule on MSNBC. It was two weeks after George Floyd’s murder, and Rhule wanted to talk to Rex about the column he published in the Lexington Herald-Leader detailing some of his experiences with racism while playing for the University of Kentucky.

During the interview, Rex told a story from his sophomore season at Owensboro High School. He had just won a road game when an opposing fan put his arm around Rex’s shoulder and said, “You know what I like about you? You play like a n----- but you get to be white.”

You get to be white. For Rex, hearing those words was bad enough. Even worse was the reaction – or rather, non-reaction – of the adults around him who heard it.

As Rex recounted the episode, he became emotional. “I’m tired of holding this stuff back,” he said. “I was a lottery pick in the NBA, and since then I’ve lived in my car. I didn’t say a lot of this stuff when I was younger, I think, because I was a little concerned about how it might affect my pocketbook. I’m not concerned about that anymore. I can go back and live in my car again. I’m gonna be honest about this stuff, and if fewer opportunities come my way because of speaking out for things I know are just, then so be it.”

When the interview was over, I called Rex. “Are you ready to change the world?” I asked.

“Sure,” he replied.

Nearly four years later, the result of that exchange is taking flight. Rex’s memoir, which I co-wrote, is being published today by Simon and Schuster. The title of the book is “It’s Hard for Me to Live with Me.” (You can order it here.) This is the ninth book I have published, and it is always an exhilarating feeling to have it released into the world. Rex, however, does not feel exhilarated. He feels terrified. He thinks everyone is going to hate him.

Working with Rex on this book has showed me that he is an intelligent, compassionate, loving and forgiving person. Unfortunately, he applies those qualities to everyone but himself. On his best days, he suffers from self-doubt. On many others, he wallows in self-loathing.

I first met Rex in March of 2014, when we worked the first two days of the NCAA tournament together at the Turner studios in Atlanta. He was easy to talk to, funny and self-deprecating, wicked smart when it came to analyzing basketball. I did notice, however, that he was out of shape, which is not uncommon for former athletes. He also talked real slow.

We stayed in touch, mostly by text message, over the summer. Then in September, I saw the shocking news that Rex had been arrested for shoplifting from an Apple store in Phoenix and selling the merchandise at a local pawn shop. Seeing the security footage of his thefts, as well as his handcuffed perp walk, was devastating. I felt awful for him, but I’ll be honest: I knew there was an important story there, and I wondered if I would have the opportunity to tell it. In the meantime, I prayed that he could put his life back together.

I followed news of Rex’s court case, but we didn’t have contact for a while. Then the following March, he sent me a text explaining that he had spent time in a rehabilitation hospital to break free from an addiction to prescription medicine. He told me he would be at the Final Four and hoped to see me there. His alma mater, Kentucky, was one of the teams in the Final Four, and Turner had asked Rex to be part of its Teamcast crew.

When we met up at Lucas Oil Stadium in Indianapolis, Rex told me that he was staying at a friend’s house in Los Angeles while plotting his next move. As it happened, the house was about a mile from where I lived. I asked him if he would let me interview him and write an article for Sports Illustrated. He agreed.

The story ran in the July 28, 2015 issue. Rex told me he didn’t read it, but that his friends and family said they liked it. We continued to talk over the years and became great friends. Occasionally, I would bring up the possibility of writing a book together. I told him I thought he had a fascinating story to tell, but I warned that if he was going to do it, he had to be all in. There could be no holding back. He was intrigued but hesitant, which was understandable given that he was trying to fix his legal troubles, repair his relationships, and find ways to make a living again.

We revisited the topic from time to time, but it wasn’t until I saw that MSNBC interview that I knew he was ready. We wrote a proposal, sold it to Simon and Schuster, and got to work.

Rex has a great memory and a colorful personality. He’s a fabulous raconteur. His father, Wayne, who played four years in the ABA, put a basketball in Rex’s hands before he could walk. From the very beginning, Rex was a prodigy, but off the court he was unsure of himself. He suffered from undiagnosed Attention Deficit Disorder (was anyone diagnosed back then?), an inclination towards depression, and social anxiety. Those things are not simpatico with being a child celebrity, but when he played basketball in front of several thousand people, Rex was calm, cool, and brimming with confidence. It made him love the game even more.

Things got harder for Rex when he started seeing a Black girl in high school. This was very much frowned upon in that time and place. No one told Rex outright he couldn’t date her, but everyone, including his parents, encouraged him to keep the relationship hidden. They hung out alone at her sister’s apartment and took separate dates to the prom. When they both ended up at Kentucky, it was the same deal. Rex’s coaches were among those who cautioned him to keep the relationship quiet, but lots of people knew about it. On several occasions when he walked out of Rupp Arena, he found racial epithets keyed into his car.

This is the dichotomy Rex took into the NBA, where he played for 12 years and made $40 million in salary but was plagued by the same demons. Having grown up in Kentucky, Rex learned at an early age to bet on racehorses, and throughout his career he spent countless hours at racetracks and Off-Track Betting parlors in every NBA city. Along the way, Rex got married and had four kids. He was a terrific player, but every time he was about to break through, he would have another injury. He underwent seven surgeries over his final three seasons. By the time he retired from the Suns in 2000, he was addicted to Vicodin. He also got hooked on OxyContin after a doctor prescribed it following an appendectomy. That’s right, an appendectomy. Within two days of taking OxyContin, Rex was, as he puts it, “in love.”

The opioids masked his physical pain, but even moreso they improved his mood. Things progressed to where he was taking 40 Vicodins and 10 OxyContins a day. He used every means he could to procure more pills, including driving to Tucson to meet a drug dealer in the parking lot of a CVS. He did two stints in rehab, which helped him to get off the meds. However, he had a lingering pain in his abdomen, for which he was prescribed Suboxone, an opioid derivative. Patients are only supposed to take Suboxone for a few months to help them transition off the harder stuff. Rex took it for 12 years.

Over time, the Suboxone eroded Rex’s mind. His marriage fell apart, and without basketball to keep him focused, things spiraled. Between the divorce, the pills, the gambling, and the poor decisions, he ran out of money. For a time, he was living in his car. He stole and sold the Apple merchandise out of financial desperation, although he barely remembers doing it. When he got arrested, he initially thought it was because he had been driving with a suspended license. Instead, he was booked on multiple felony counts and ended up being sentenced to probation and community service.

Rex recounted all these details to me during our lengthy conversations, most of which took place over the phone. He was fine until our narrative reached his rock bottom. At that point he postponed our appointments frequently, telling me he needed more time to recover from our previous conversation. I would ask him to repeat our mantra – “No shame” – but it did little good.

As we now know, Rex was able to climb out of the valley. He got off the Suboxone – it turned out that pain in his belly was caused by an ulcer, not opioid withdrawal – and found some work in the media. He accidentally became a major social media influencer and now has 1.2 million followers on Twitter. After spending most of his life disinterested in politics, he became vocal about issues he cared about, especially race. He did some radio work in Kentucky, covered the NBA for Turner sports, and hosted a couple of podcasts as well a show on the short-lived CNN-Plus streaming service. Last fall, he moved back to Phoenix and took a job with the Suns.

As difficult as it was to recount all these stories for the book, Rex seemed at peace with the process. That is, until he started reading the final version. Our editor at Simon and Schuster, Sean Manning, made a late decision to switch the narrative to the present tense. Sean wanted the readers to feel closer to the action, as if they were watching it unfurl in real time. That adjustment worked too well for Rex’s taste, because reading it caused him to relive all that trauma. At one point he had a severe panic attack and checked into a hospital. We still had some final edits to make, but it was impossible for me to get him on the phone. So I drove to Phoenix and we sat for one last session.

Now comes the hard part. Rex is convinced that the world is going to read this book and judge him harshly for the mistakes he made. The truth is, no one will judge him more harshly than he judges himself. I’ve said to him many times, “If I did all these things and asked you to forgive me, you wouldn’t hesitate. But I ask you to forgive yourself, and you won’t do it.” It falls on deaf ears every time.

Towards the end of the book, we tell a story about a time when Rex was leaving the gym and a young employee told him that his father heard Rex speak at a rehab clinic. Like everyone else in Kentucky, the father was a huge Rex Chapman fan, and hearing his testimony had a huge impact on his own recovery from addiction. Upon hearing this, Rex teared up, hugged the kid, and thanked him. Whenever Rex got lost in his negative self-talk, I asked him to think about that kid and his dad, and all the people whose lives and families have been ravaged by opioid addiction. “Something good has to come from all your pain,” I said. “This book will do that.”

I hope someday Rex will experience the catharsis he deserves. I don’t know how long that will take, but I do know we wrote a damn good book. Will it really change the world? Maybe, maybe not. But if it convinces Rex to finally forgive himself, that would be enough.

ncG1vNJzZmirlam1pa3Voqpnq6WXwLWtwqRlnKedZL1wvsSxZJygkaW6orqMrZ%2Bippuoerq71KucZp%2BfnruoedOo