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Draymond Green on how therapy sessions improve his on-court performance: "It does because ultimately it helps your temperament. It helps you in decision making. It helps you in patience. It helps you have grace. And so I think ultimately it does because it makes you a better person. And being a better person is 1,000% going to make you a better player because it affects all the other things that you do. It affects your whole being."
DeMar DeRozan: You ever just sit in a dark room and feel like the darkness is the only thing that truly understands you. No fake smiles, no false hope. Just raw bitter silence…
Irving said the league has changed drastically since he entered it in 2011, though his “eternal flame” for basketball continues to burn. “You have social media and gambling which is running rampant and it’s not the same NBA that I fell in love with as a kid and I’m very much aware of that. And I don’t say that as a negative thing, it’s just when I came in, we were not doing like tipping and gambling meetings. You know, kind of talking about these things that are going on on social media and mental health was like this foreign subject …like nobody ever talked about it in 2011, so I think that the game has changed, it’s become less human, it’s more robotic. And I think my next few years, I kind of look at it as like, do I really love that aspect of it? I love the playing, I love the competition, but do I love all the hoopla that goes into it.”
Last season was frustrating as George had just begun to feel healthy before being slapped with a 25-game suspension for violating the NBA’s drug policy. George said the substance he digested was for a “mental health issue.” He opened up about his vulnerabilities, acknowledging he wasn’t immune to doubts, insecurities, or regrets. Ever since George demanded a trade from Indiana in 2017 to a potential championship contender, pressure has been on the gifted forward to produce personal and team greatness. And while he has made the All-Star team five times since that trade, team success has eluded him and George has faced criticism.
“Not every player is willing to do that and be proactive about [mental health],” Redick said of LaRavia. “When we sat down for our meeting at the end of the season, those are the two things that we talked about: Being proactive about your mental health, being proactive about your shooting. And he did both of those things this summer.”
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So, yes, Duncan Robinson played on Oct. 28, 2024. Even if that day’s pregame shootaround was awkward. The prior afternoon, the Heat unveiled a statue of Dwyane Wade in a ceremony outside Kaseya Center in downtown Miami. Attendance was mandatory. Duncan was a no-show. Robinson, in his seventh year with the Heat, heard all about it. Teammates busted him up. “Damn! You’re too big for D Wade?!” one cracked. Duncan laughed it off. He never mentioned why he missed the ceremony. He never told anyone that night’s game felt like playing “in a silo.” “It was the first time in my career I can remember being actively in a game, but my mind not exclusively being in the game,” Duncan says. “I remember someone being on the free-throw line and I was completely dazing out of the moment, thinking about my brother.”
Duncan missed Dwyane Wade’s statue ceremony because, when leaving his condo that afternoon, his mother called. Elisabeth Robinson asked if Duncan was with Caroline, his then-girlfriend. She asked if he was sitting down. She paused, working out the words. “Is Eli OK?” Duncan asked. “He is alive,” Elisabeth said. “But he jumped.” “Which bridge?”
In January 2013, at 7:24 p.m. on a Tuesday, Portsmouth (N.H.) Police were called to the Exit 7 off-ramp near the Interstate 95 interchange. There they found Eli, 22, standing on the side of the road, without a scratch, and a blue Mazda resting against a tree, opposite a guardrail. Eli was charged with driving while intoxicated. His name and address ran in the newspaper. Eli’s addictions took everything — time, relationships, money, trust, his adulthood. As Duncan made a name for himself at Michigan, latched on with the Heat, and strung together the early days of an NBA career, Eli wandered through his 20s, kicking around New Castle and Portsmouth, landing with whomever he was on speaking terms with at any given time. A leaf in the wind. “He roved,” Elisabeth says of Eli. “Sort of like his mind, just roving around.”
Eli called Duncan upwards of 15 times per day to check in. Dial, talk, call again 10 minutes later. Duncan answered every time. Before practice. After practice. In the morning. At dinner. Boarding a plane. His lone reprieve was the 90 minutes before every game. Sitting in his locker, quieting the noise. Closing his eyes, picturing the next play. Phone off. Duncan was involved in his brother’s day-to-day, but distance afforded a degree of detachment.
But then came the 2021-22 season. After starting 140 of 145 games over the second and third years of his rookie contract and establishing himself as one of the league’s best 3-point shooters, Duncan signed a five-year, $90 million contract with Miami before the campaign. To some, the deal proved Robinson’s place as a folk hero in a sport of action heroes. Others deemed him merely a product of the Heat system. Many questioned what Miami was thinking. Ninety million? Straight into this scene walked Eli. Having committed to sobriety that fall, he moved to Florida, settling into a rehabilitation facility in West Palm Beach, an hour north of Miami. “A terrible idea,” Marta says now. “A difficult time,” Duncan adds.
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Heavier shoulders didn’t help a career based on makes and misses. No longer a bargain-bin feel-good story, Duncan played in the spreading shadow of expectations. His shooting percentages dipped. His minutes dropped. Social media went scorched earth. Critics laughed. Every game turned into a stress test. Then came his off days. A different kind of stress. No one in the Heat organization knew Duncan was driving to West Palm whenever possible to spend time with his brother, or the toll it was taking. As Scott Gurka, Miami’s director of basketball administration, remembers: “He disguised it.”
In time, as Eli got clean, the truth emerged: His substance abuse had masked the severity of his mental illness. He moved from rehab in West Palm to a psychiatric center in Delray. “I felt like I was living this sort of dual life,” Duncan says. “A lot of it was, if I missed a game, or talked about what was happening, there’s an opportunity cost. If I go to be with my brother, someone is gonna come in and play well and then who knows? I had gotten so far into the extreme of: ‘I have to compartmentalize this.’ When I was an NBA player, that’s what I was. And when I wasn’t, I tried to lean into being there for my brother.”
Duncan was out of Spoelstra’s starting lineup by season’s end. He was barely in the rotation come playoff time. After making 8 of 9 3s against Atlanta in Game 1 of Miami’s opening series, Duncan averaged barely 10 minutes as the Heat reached Game 7 of the Eastern Conference finals. He sat entirely — the dreaded, “DNP: Coach’s decision” — for five of the team’s 18 playoff games. The benefit of Eli’s move to Miami? Time with Caroline. She and Duncan had met a few years earlier. Duncan loved Eli, and Caroline loved Duncan, so Caroline loved Eli. She’d visit him when Duncan was on the road or unavailable. Her favorite memory is going to the beach together. Eli would jump into the Atlantic and float on his back, looking up, at peace. In time, Eli returned to New Hampshire, stringing together periods of lucid days as a warm, loving uncle, with stretches of forced hospitalizations. All feared where the despair was heading.
On Oct. 27, 2024, Eli watched the New England Patriots play the New York Jets with his dad. Jeffrey could sense something was off. “What’s wrong?” In a flash, Eli was up and pacing. He told his father: “A voice is telling me to kill you.” Jeffrey pleaded with Eli to calm down and suggested they go to a hospital. Eli grabbed his keys and fled the house. Hours later, Eli was pulled from the Piscataqua River, still breathing, following a 135-foot fall from the I-95 overpass. Sustaining broken ribs and a collapsed lung, he was put into a medically induced coma. After skipping the team-mandated statue ceremony for Dwyane Wade, and playing a meaningless early-season game against the Pistons, Duncan was at Marta’s side as their brother awoke days later. They made Eli tell them that, no matter how bad things got, he’d never jump again.