Summary: “One night I was in the players’ parking lot at the Fleet Center in my Celtics warm-ups about a half hour before a game, waiting for one of my dealers to come up from Fall River, because if I didn’t get my stuff I was too sick to even go through the pre-game layup line, never mind actually play in the game.” – Chris Herren. In this episode of the Massachusetts School of Law’s Educational Forum Associate Dean Michael Coyne talks with Chris Herren about his memoir in which he goes from high school glory to Hell and back. Kirkus Reviews calls the memoir, ” An unflinching look at a life of wasted potential…told with a bluntness and heart that you can’t help but root for Herren to stay clean.” The Massachusetts School of Law also presents information on important current affairs to the general public in television and radio broadcasts, an intellectual journal, conferences, author appearances, blogs and books. For more information visit mslaw.edu. To listen to the audio podcast of the above video, click the play button below, or subscribe to the entire series on iTunes. Below is a rough transcript of the above video, courtesy of YouTube Captions hello i’m michael coyne associate dean of the massachusetts school of law at andover welcome for anyone who watched the movie the blindside or blue chips you would think that having recruiteres knocking on your door or sitting in the stands watching your every move would be the best thing that ever happened to any high school or college athlete and i’m sure it was for a lot of student athletes but not the one sixteen-year-old durfee high school in fall river mass for him that pressure became unbearable this promising athlete was called hte best white white guard since jerry west a high school hero the next great hope but all that pressure made him turn to drugs on today’s edition of the educational forum we talk to that young man now grown up and a father of three who has written a new book in which he talked very frankly about his spiraling down and out life style and what it took get himself free of his addiction the book is entitled basketball junkie a memoir and our guest is Chris herren chris herren was in fact a basketball junkie also joining us is frank catapano a national basketball player agent and chris’ agent for many years chris explains just what it felt like to have this agents sitting in the stands and watching his every move well i i think when you know when your sixteen years old and you look up in the stands and you know theres is rick pitino and billy donovan uh…stu jackson jeff angundy i don’t think any sixteen-year-old sixteen-year-old knows how to uh… to deal with that you know it’s uh… it besides performing at a level that they expect you to perform and that you want to perform because you don’t wanna fail so i think the whole remedy is a uh… is a disaster you know i i wish the the n_c_a_ would change actually uh… that process and starat the recruiting process later on you know the junior year junior senior because i had them around since i was a freshman and i was it was difficult now you had your pick of schools and it came down to a choice between syracuse and bc uh… hometown boy stays home town in retrospect would that do you wish you made a different decision there cuz i know uh…at BC at least initially you were on the cover of sports illustrated with uh… ray allen and allen iverson your where the next three greats yet uh… you know something i wouldn’t hindsight you know looking back maybe what i would change is goto prep school for a year rather than jump onto a college campus with all that freedom i would change that if i would change anything i might change staying at bc and going through what i had to go through and uh… and finishing it fresno was great to me in different ways uh…[...]
