When we watch our favorite athletes, sometimes we tend to forget that they’re real people. They have real lives, real families, real issues. Jerry West, one of the greatest players of all time and the literal symbol of the NBA, is coming out with a memoir this week that will go into great detail about his.
West says he’s been battling depression since he was just a kid. That his father used to beat him, causing low-self esteem even through one of the most successful NBA careers ever. He was able to hide it well during his playing days,. What looked like drive and dedication to the fans was really just West’s fear of failure. But once the season was over, West would dwell on all the losses, causing a strain on his marriage and family life.
“I would go to bed feeling like I didn’t even want to live,” West says in a segment airing Tuesday on HBO’s “Real Sports withBryant Gumbel.”
“I’ve been so low sometimes and when everyone else would be so high because I didn’t like myself.”
The memoir, titled “West by West: My Charmed, Tormented Life” will be available on Wednesday. West’s family asked him not to write it, probably fearing he would bring back the issues that have eased in the past decade, but he did anyway.
You hate to hear about anyone going through something like this, but it seems so surreal when it’s someone you’ve watched through a camera lens or from a seat in a stadium for years. People who idolized West, and cheered him on throughout his playing career probably had no idea what was really going on inside his head.
These days, we all feel like we know our favorite players personally. We see them a few times a week on TV, we hear interviews, we even follow their personal thoughts on Twitter, but how well do we really know them? Any number of athletes could be going through the same thing that Jerry West did during his career.
I think this is a perfect opportunity to point out that the guys we yell at when they screw up are people too. They have feelings that get hurt just like the rest of us. I’m not trying to start some public sympathy campaign for athletes, I just think it’s something to keep in mind next time you go to see your favorite team play.
