{"id":2445720,"date":"2019-06-25T21:28:00","date_gmt":"2019-06-26T03:28:00","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.aspentimes.com\/news\/at-aspen-ideas-festival-nba-players-talk-about-their-struggles-with-depression\/"},"modified":"2019-06-25T21:28:00","modified_gmt":"2019-06-26T03:28:00","slug":"at-aspen-ideas-festival-nba-players-talk-about-their-struggles-with-depression","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/alwaysmountaintime.com\/kspn\/local-news\/at-aspen-ideas-festival-nba-players-talk-about-their-struggles-with-depression\/","title":{"rendered":"At Aspen Ideas Festival, NBA players talk about their struggles with depression"},"content":{"rendered":"
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Two NBA players wrestling with depression and anxiety also find themselves wrestling with public perception.<\/p>\n

Just how could two 29-year-old men, after all, both of whom make more money in one or two games than most Americans earn in an entire year, suffer from anxiety and depression?<\/p>\n

For DeMar DeRozan and Kevin Love, both of whom discussed their plights with mental health Tuesday at Paepcke Auditorium as part of the Aspen Ideas Festival, it\u2019s almost a question not worth dignifying.<\/p>\n

It was one moderator Michael Gervais asked them, however, using a comment NBA analyst and Hall of Famer Charles Barkley made to ESPN earlier this year to set up the question.<\/p>\n

\u201cOne of your colleagues had something to say about depression,\u201d Gervais said. \u201cDo you want to respond in any way his take on depression?\u201d<\/p>\n

Love responded, \u201cYou mean him saying we have all the money and we shouldn\u2019t be depressed? Stupid.\u201d<\/p>\n

And they left it at that.<\/p>\n

The packed audience roared in delight, but Barkley\u2019s remarks illustrated the public\u2019s misconceptions about mental health, while Love\u2019s swift dismissal of the question illustrated his and DeRozan\u2019s challenges in the arena of public awareness about anxiety and depression.<\/p>\n

Barkley\u2019s comments came after NBA commissioner Adam Silver was quoted as saying<\/a> in March that many NBA players are unhappy and \u201cpart of it is a direct result of social media.\u201d<\/p>\n

\u201cListen, he\u2019s a great guy,\u201d Barkley said. \u201cBut that\u2019s the stupidest thing I ever heard any commissioner say. Listen \u2026 these guys are making $20, $30, $40 million a year. They work six, seven months a year. We stay at the best hotels in the world. They ain\u2019t got no problems. That\u2019s total bogus.\u201d<\/p>\n

Yet DeRozan and Love, both of whom broke their silence about depression last year, said their professional careers haven\u2019t been defined by a life of glamor and fame, even though both played in the Olympics and have been named NBA All-Stars.<\/p>\n

Love suffered from a panic attack in a November 2017 game, and came out in March 2018 about his ailment. His teammates were down on him, and he wasn\u2019t playing to his potential.<\/p>\n

\u201cI felt like I was having a cardiac arrest,\u201d he said of the panic attack. \u201cI didn\u2019t know what was going on.\u201d<\/p>\n

Love said he was inspired to open up after DeRozan tweeted about his emotional struggles during the NBA\u2019s All-Star Weekend in February 2018.<\/p>\n

Since going public, both said they feel as though their emotional struggles have eased but haven\u2019t gone away entirely. Their struggles intensify when they\u2019re away from playing hoops; the two said that\u2019s because they don\u2019t have the same feeling of control off the court as they do on it.<\/p>\n

\u201cIt\u2019s been a roller coaster,\u201d DeRozan said of his past 30 days. \u201cI\u2019m not going to lie. But me being more aware of it and being able to have people in my life now that I open up with or I\u2019m able to talk to, or even at times just checking on me in the sense of having conversations, clearing my mind, helping me try to identify what\u2019s causing my moods, shorten them where before they would linger on for a couple of days, a couple of weeks.\u201d<\/p>\n

The two players now can talk freely and openly about their challenges, saying they now have a \u201chigher purpose\u201d in convincing others with similar issues that they are not alone and there is help.<\/p>\n

\u201cWe are looked at as superheroes in a lot of ways,\u201d Love said. \u201cIndestructible. And there\u2019s a feeling of invincibility, like when you\u2019re a little kid, but there are so many layers to the human being.<\/p>\n

\u201cPeople forget, I think, they don\u2019t take a step back and look at us as human beings, and all we want to do is have that human connection and so much of that is lost, and having that isolation, going out in public, or being away from anything basketball-related can create and you can be subject to that sort of feeling on an everyday basis. That, in itself, is something we have to go through.\u201d<\/p>\n

Love recently signed a four-year contract with the Cleveland Cavaliers for $120 million.<\/p>\n

DeRozan drew a salary of $27.7 million for this past season with the San Antonio Spurs.<\/p>\n

Yet, financial wealth doesn\u2019t translate to emotional well-being, Gervais said.<\/p>\n

\u201cGlobally, the U.S. and affluent countries are at more risk (to depression and anxiety) than countries of poverty,\u201d he said, also saying that women are more prone to depression than men.<\/p>\n

Three hundred million people worldwide experience depression or anxiety on some level, and mental health costs $1 trillion to treat globally, according to Gervais. Some people are afflicted with it at birth, while others \u201cearn it\u201d over time through mounting personal struggles, he said.<\/p>\n

Growing up in poverty in Compton, California, DeRozan said he played sports to put him on a path toward a better life. DeRozan said he didn\u2019t compute the level of his depression and mood swings until he joined the NBA. He\u2019ll be entering his 11th season this fall.<\/p>\n

\u201cI grew up extremely rough, seeing a lot of things before my mind was fully developed to comprehend a lot of things,\u201d DeRozan said.<\/p>\n

Those childhood episodes were stored in the back of his mind, but DeRozan said they came out in other ways \u2014 whether through anger, depression or mood swings.<\/p>\n

\u201cI definitely think it was a lot of things that I saw when I was growing up, things I witnessed,\u201d he said. \u201cI just got to a point where I want to understand it. I want to know why this is carrying on. I don\u2019t to be that person when I retire \u2014 be miserable with a bunch of money. I really want to get to a point where I\u2019m just happy.\u201d<\/p>\n

rcarroll@aspentimes.com<\/a><\/p>\n

via:: The Aspen Times<\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Two NBA players wrestling with depression and anxiety also find themselves wrestling with public perception. Just how could two 29-year-old men, after all, both of whom make more money in one or two games than most Americans earn in an entire year, suffer from anxiety and depression? For DeMar DeRozan and Kevin Love, both of […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_acf_changed":false,"footnotes":""},"categories":[49],"tags":[],"class_list":{"0":"post-2445720","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","6":"category-local-news"},"acf":[],"publishpress_future_action":{"enabled":false,"date":"2026-06-20 08:24:59","action":"change-status","newStatus":"draft","terms":[],"taxonomy":"category","extraData":[]},"publishpress_future_workflow_manual_trigger":{"enabledWorkflows":[]},"distributor_meta":false,"distributor_terms":false,"distributor_media":false,"distributor_original_site_name":"KSPN The Valley's Quality Rock","distributor_original_site_url":"https:\/\/alwaysmountaintime.com\/kspn","push-errors":false,"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/alwaysmountaintime.com\/kspn\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2445720","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/alwaysmountaintime.com\/kspn\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/alwaysmountaintime.com\/kspn\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/alwaysmountaintime.com\/kspn\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/alwaysmountaintime.com\/kspn\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=2445720"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/alwaysmountaintime.com\/kspn\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2445720\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/alwaysmountaintime.com\/kspn\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=2445720"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/alwaysmountaintime.com\/kspn\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=2445720"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/alwaysmountaintime.com\/kspn\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=2445720"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}