As a lost, confused young man plays the martyr on Twitter timelines, Royce White's
chance to construct a sustainable professional basketball career slips
away. He's chasing cheers on the court for the Houston Rockets, but they
haven't found him deserving of playing time. So, White started to lash
out, search for his stardom in cyberspace, and it's turned a combustible
partnership into an embarrassing public spectacle.
White has left the Rockets, and there's no telling when he'll return.
Before long, White will lose the platform that he so desperately wants
to advocate for mental illness. He's fighting a noble fight, with the
most noble of intentions, and perhaps someday he can be remembered as a
trailblazer on the issue of anxiety disorders.
Yet now, this can't be his crusade, his burden. It's too much. People
have tried to tell him this. Royce White needs to save himself and save
his basketball career. Without the NBA, his desire to bring awareness –
to be a champion for change – will come to an unapologetic and abrupt
end.
As White turns this organization into his betrayers, turns himself into a
martyr of injustice, he should be preparing himself for the end of his
NBA career. This is professional sports, and the cold truth is this: So
far, he isn't worth the trouble. So far, he was a waste of a draft pick
at No. 16, a waste of the time and care invested in him. Maybe that's
hard for him to hear, but it's true – and only he can change it.
This isn't a dismissal of mental illness. This isn't a belittling of his
struggle. This is simply a fact. As he rails against the Rockets'
insistence that he meet with one of their doctors when he's failing to
honor his contract to show up for practices and games, he's losing sight
that this is the one organization that's invested in his mental health
and development as a player.
[Related: Royce White and Rockets at odds]
If Houston gives up on him, White will struggle to find another team
willing to make even close to the commitment – if any at all. White has
turned down NBA D-League assignments, missed practices and conditioning
workouts and tried to convince Rockets officials that his anxiety order
would be much, much better if they would simply play him in games. This
isn't a negotiation, and never will be.
Houston redid White's contract so it could pay for White's RVs and car
services on trips, because of his fear of flying. The Rockets have let
him come and go this season without fining him. They owe him that
patience and understanding, but they don't owe him playing time. It's
earned in the NBA, the way three Houston rookies are trying to earn it.
White has yet to play for the Rockets in the regular season. (AP)If
it was easier for White to manage his anxiety disorder when he was the
star at Iowa State, well, that isn't the Rockets' problem. There's no
leveraging an anxiety disorder to get out of a D-League demotion and
onto the NBA floor.
When meetings with Rockets coaches and officials couldn't get White the
minutes he wanted, when a demotion to Rio Grande and the bus trips of
the minors had been broached, White stopped showing up to the team's
facility for practices and games last week. Maybe it was a coincidence,
but White is losing the benefit of the doubt.
Metta World Peace and Delonte West had public bouts with mental illness
and eventually confronted them in constructive, public ways. They tried
to make a difference for people, but they also had proven themselves as
NBA players. World Peace has lasted in the league because he understood
this is a results business, and he's had to be even better than the next
guy to survive so long with the issues that never went away. Right now,
White hasn't played a minute in the NBA, and it's fair to wonder if he
ever will.
The Rockets believed it was a significant gamble to take White with the
16th pick, but considered him one of the top five talents in the class
and were willing to be patient, to give him every possible support
system and do the most dangerous thing a team can do in a locker room:
allow there to be a separate set of rules for an athlete.
White wanted separate transportation to get to training camp, and it was
offered him. He didn't take it. The Rockets redid his contract and
agreed to pay for the RV travel to bring him to selected games. They
sent a vehicle to pick him up for the drive to training camp, and he
didn't get into it. The list goes on and on, and it's November of his
rookie season.
Most teams in the NBA would never give White this kind of special
treatment. "He isn't good enough – and I'm not sure anyone would be good
enough – to have a completely different set of guidelines for him," one
GM told me. "I would've already cut him."
There are a lot of NBA owners and GMs who agree, and yet the Rockets
think differently on White. In that way, he's fortunate. It is hard to
have an NBA career, and it's even harder for him given the obstacles he
must overcome. Everyone is rooting for this guy, especially the
franchise that's getting ridiculed for drafting him, the general
manager, Daryl Morey, who clearly has an angry owner over the entire
spectacle.
I don't know what it's like to live with White's anxiety disorder, and I
don't pretend to know how he should feel about what's happened lately
between him and the Rockets. Nevertheless, there are people close to him
begging him to start cooperating with the Rockets again, because this
is the best chance – the best commitment – a franchise will ever have in
him as an NBA player.
In the past 24 hours, White slowed down the Twitter rampage and started
to fulfill some of his obligations to the Rockets, sources told Yahoo!
Sports. That's something, anyway. This public platform matters to White,
and he needs to understand that despite his protests, he is indeed a
commodity. When the risk outweighs the reward on him, he's gone – and
probably gone forever in the league.
The NBA will never be played on his terms. Royce White isn't good
enough, and the sooner he realizes it, the sooner he understands only he
can save himself right now, the sooner he can maybe salvage a career
that's already slipping away.
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