The NBA arena is a star-studded arena. Illuminated by the spotlight, some athletes from poor backgrounds became famous overnight here. Magnesium lamp is easy to cast a field star, but also easy to destroy a teenager who once simply loved basketball.
His name is Eddie Griffin, a big forward player with amazing physical fitness of 2.08 meters tall. Born in Philadelphia, Eddie was a national basketball star in high school. For his wonderful performances, Eddie was named The Nation's Player of the Year by Parade Magazine the year he graduated and participated in the McDonald's All-Star Game.
In the 2001 NBA Draft, the New Jersey Nets selected the freshman from Seton Hall University with the No. 7 pick in the first round. Eddie Griffin, who was the pick favorite of that year, dropped to seventh due to attitude problems, and the Houston Rockets did not hesitate to trade him from the Nets with Jason Collins, Brandon Armstrong and Richard Jefferson. 3 for 1 shows how much the Rockets loved this talented but bad 19-year-old boy.
The Rockets originally built a team around Francis, and Eddie's arrival undoubtedly made the future of the Rockets more worthy of hope. He averaged 8.8 points, 5.7 rebounds and 1.84 blocks per game in his rookie season. Eddie Griffin, as a cap maniac, once boasted of breaking Olajuwon's cap record, but what happened afterwards turned Eddie's words into a young and crazy cowhide.
In the first two years of the Rockets, Eddie Griffin's performance is worthy of recognition. In particular, his amazing blocking ability once made it thought he would grow into a top defensive big forward, and he also had a good three-pointer.
After the addition of the little giant Yao Ming to the team, the interior defensive barrier formed by Eddie and Yao Ming became a nightmare for the opponent, and the two of them successfully built the Rockets' three-second zone into a no-fly zone. However, the unexpected death of his brother became an eternal guilt and pain in Eddie's heart. At one point, his brother objected to his premature entry into the NBA, and the brothers became estranged. His brother Powell made a phone call to Eddie in the last moments of his life, but he did not answer, so this guilt and chagrin led to Eddie's increasing depression and loneliness in the future, he began to become confused and helpless, began to drink wildly, began to get addicted to drugs, and began to degenerate.
In December 2003, Eddie Griffin was sidelined by the Rockets due to his absence from training and flights. In January 2004, the Nets, who had chosen him, took him in, but due to severe alcoholism, the Nets swept him out of the house just two months later. Before the start of the 2004-2005 season, the Timberwolves gave him a one-year contract. At the side of wolf king KG, Eddie seems to have regained the shadow of the past, and the data is slowly the same as that of the Rockets.
However, the overly repressive personality will one day explode, and on August 17, 2007, at 1:30 a.m., Eddie Griffin died in a car accident. The police said in the report that Eddie Griffin ignored the railway warning and forced the crossing of the railway, resulting in a collision with an oncoming train. The result was that Eddie Griffin's SUV car, which was carrying plastic pellets, caught fire. Eddie Griffin's body was badly burned and could not be identified, and was eventually identified through a tooth comparison, and the autopsy report showed that he had seriously exceeded the alcohol standard in his body at the time of the crash.
Eddie Griffin, who was once incredibly talented, had high hopes from the team, but a repressed personality and lack of self-control eventually took him to extremes. In just 5 NBA seasons, Eddie's achievements are not worth mentioning in a league where only new people laugh and see old people cry. It was all over when he crashed into the train in his SUV, and he ended his life in this sad way, which was perhaps a cruel relief for him.