New Orleans Pelicans forward Ryan Anderson returned home to his native Sacramento on Tuesday night to take on the Kings. The Oak Ridge High School grad-turned-NBA super-sub has had a year to forget.
Professional athletes live in a fish bowl. Their every move is food for a hungry 24-hour news cycle and for Anderson, the glare was magnified by a relationship with a reality television star.
If you don’t know the story, Anderson and Gia Allemand of Bachelor fame began dating in 2012. I could rehash the details of the relationship, its nexus to its heartbreaking end, but that would be a disservice to the incredible work of Sports Illustrated’s Chris Ballard.
To make a long and horrific story short, Allemand took her own life on August 12, 2013, leaving Anderson in shambles.
For more than a year, the 26-year-old forward has looked for answers. Injures wiped out all but 22 games of his 2013-14 season, leaving him away from the game he loves and with plenty of time to reflect.
But Anderson is now ready to turn his own personal nightmare into his own personal mission.
“The most important thing is helping other people and having people understand such a misconception of a topic,” Anderson told Cowbell Kingdom before Tuesday’s game. “It’s something that for me is near and dear to my heart. It’s a mission for me to help people and share my story.”
The topic is suicide, although he never said the words. It’s an uncomfortable topic for almost everyone, but one that needs a voice. Anderson has decided he is strong enough to step up to the challenge.
“This is something that I feel like God gave me this platform to talk about and it’s so out of my hands, but people are responding and it’s pretty amazing, just people opening up and talking about things they’ve been through. That’s what it’s about.”
“We live in a world says we have to be perfect and live a certain way and it’s not possible,” Anderson continued. “Nobody’s like that. So to be able to talk about flaws and things that people have been through in life and to bounce back and forth with that with people is just really amazing. It’s really beautiful in such a horrible situation, to find something beautiful out of it. It’s unreal. I have no words to describe it.”
Anderson is taking it one day at a time. He is left with a lifetime of “what ifs”. He is back on the court excelling at the game he loves, but he does so with a heavy heart.
With family and friends in the stands, Anderson took to the Sleep Train Arena floor like did as a kid. Sacramento is home. The Kings are his team. And basketball is his sanctuary.
“I’m just a guy playing a basketball game tonight,” Anderson said. “I always think it’s an honor, it’s a humbling experience coming back home and being around a crowd like this. I was once somebody in this exact same crowd, so it’s cool to be on the court.”
Anderson played his game. After a slow start, he caught fire after the break, scoring nine of his 22 points in less than six minutes in the third.
Basketball is an escape. But Anderson is no longer looking for just an escape, nor is he hiding from the pain that has consumed his life over the last 14 months. He wants to make a difference in people’s lives, and he has a powerful platform to get his message across.
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