Dennis Rodman lived an all-or-nothing life. His extravagant lifestyle, which had started just a few years into the NBA, kept accelerating as more lucrative contracts came his ways. The Rebound King’s colorful life was decorated with wild parties and thoughtless expenditure. But underneath all the drama, Rodman was depressed. He once even tried to end it all. In an interview with GQ in 2021, Rodman talked about how ‘Pearl Jam’ saved his life.
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Abandoned by his father at an early age, there was a void inside him that Rodman wanted to fill desperately since childhood. Not understanding how to do it, he blew through his $27,000,000 career earnings in parties, gambling, legal cases, and whatnot. In fact, the Bulls legend now has a net worth of just around $500,000 and lives in a rented apartment in Michigan. However, he wouldn’t be living at all if Pearl Jam hadn’t come up with the song ‘Black’.
Pearl Jam saved Dennis Rodman with the album ‘Ten’
In 1993, Dennis Rodman hit rock bottom with his depression and found suicide as the only option that could end his misery. Rodman’s mental health started deteriorating with the departure of head coach Chuck Daly from the Pistons. The Worm looked up to Daly as a mentor and a father-figure. Therefore, his departure and the drastic changes in the Pistons system rekindled his childhood trauma and pushed him toward darkness.
He once tried to kill himself with a gun while sitting in his truck. At the time, the rock band Pearl Jam’s ‘Ten’ was one of the most-played albums in the country and it somehow was helping people deal with anxiety, loneliness, depression, and suicidal thoughts.
Much like the frontman Eddie Vedder of Pearl Jam, Rodman’s father had abandoned him when he was just 3 years old. And the song ‘Black’ was about losing somebody early in life and the impact of them leaving. During his 2021 GQ interview, Rodman said, “I had a bit of an issue in 1993, I wanted to commit that whole thing called suicide…It’s so true when you hear these lyrics[Rodman said after murmuring the lyrics for some time]…It saved my life man, I tried to commit suicide.”
Watch him tell the whole story himself in the following video, or read about it in the chain of tweets by Frank Michael Smith.
The ‘Black’ song specifically was the one, which stopped Rodman from pulling the trigger.
Rodman was once defrauded by his financial advisor
A Harvard graduate, Peggy Ann Fulford was Rodman’s financial advisor, whose motto was to help her clients create generational wealth. However, she was defrauding them to create that for herself behind the scenes.
“It makes me sad I trusted someone I considered family to manage my money, and they did terribly wrong by me. I hope other athletes and celebrities can learn from this experience,” Rodman told CNBC.
In 2016, Peggy was arrested and sentenced to 10 years in prison. The list of her victims included some more athletes, including NBA’s Travis Best, Rashad McCants, NFL’s Ricky Williams, and Lex Hilliard. The total reported sum was around $6 million and she had to pay $5.7 million back to her clients.
