Bernard King and his struggle with substance abuse is one of NBA’s biggest “What IFs”, as the man still scored 19k career points.
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Bernard King was one of the NBA’s fiercest competitors of all time. That came from his childhood, which was mostly riddled with trouble and violence at home.
Growing up in a small apartment in Fort Greene during the 1960s and 70s, King had an abusive relationship with his mother. He detailed his anguish in his autobiography, “Game Face: A Lifetime of Hard-Earned Lessons On and Off the Basketball Court,” which came out in 2017.
“I found a place mentally to go to escape the pain,” King told amNewYork while promoting the book. “In escaping the pain, that was the face that I fashioned in interacting with my mother. That’s where my game face comes from, to defeat the pain.”
That and his struggle with racism during his time at the University of Tennessee led him towards alcohol to find an escape from the cruelty of life. But even after he made it big in the NBA, going in as the 7th overall pick to the New Jersey Nets, he couldn’t get rid of his habit.
Bernard King almost made Phil Jackson a Head Coach a decade before he actually did
Despite averaging around 23 points, 9 rebounds, 3 assists, and 1.5 steals a game in his first two seasons with the Nets, he was traded in the off-season to Utah Jazz which came as an eye-opener for the 6’7 forward.
Phil Jackson who was New Jersey’s assistant coach at the time, in his book Eleven Rings, mentioned how King’s “substance use problem” and getting arrested for “drunk driving and cocaine possession” led to Kevin Loughery almost quitting the job as head coach of the Nets.
Jackson also opened up about how Kevin put forward his name as the replacement for him to the Nets’ management, but later backed down from his quitting decision. The Nets traded away King the following season.
King then went to join a rehab in his first season with the Jazz and played just 19 games in the season, which led to him founding himself with the Golden State Warriors.
That 2-year stint helped him to earn a call from the New York Knicks where he’d earn his 3x All-Star, 2x All-NBA First team, and a scoring title in his 5 years with the club, the last year of which ended up in him being injured and missing the entire season.
Those 4-years proved enough for him to go down as one of the basketball icons in New York and also to earn him a place in the Naismith Hall of Famer in 2013 with over 19,000 career points.
