Ex-Knick: I tried suicide as a rookie
At the time in his life when Michael Sweetney should have been at his highest point, a tragedy sent him to rock bottom.
Sweetney, selected by the Knicks with the ninth pick in the 2003 draft, in 2003, lost his father, Samuel, to a heart attack days before he was to start his first NBA training camp. Sweetney attended the funeral, and two days later reported to the Knicks’ training facility.
But basketball did little to distract him from the emotional aftermath of his father’s sudden death, he said, and he tried to make his suicidal thoughts a reality during one road trip with the team.
“I remember the night,” Sweetney recalled in a tell-all interview with HoopsHype published Monday. “We were in Cleveland one night and I just took a bunch of pain pills, hoping it would take me out. But I woke up the next morning thinking, ‘Well, it didn’t work.’ That’s how bad it was.”
Sweetney, a star forward at Georgetown who averaged a double-double in his last two seasons with his father in the stands for every game, played in just 42 games in his rookie year with the Knicks. His struggles on the court, combined with his battle with depression and a battle with his weight, kept him feeling as if he were in the dark.
“I didn’t like basketball and I just didn’t like life at the time,” he said. “I went from being a star at Georgetown and having my father at every game, to losing him and not even playing in the NBA. I knew I wasn’t going to be given a chance as a rookie because my coach told me, ‘Hey, I’m not going to play you.’ ”
Don Chaney was the head coach of that season’s team. Sweetney said he didn’t seek help because he was afraid people would be quick to label him “crazy.”
“Even after I tried to commit suicide, nobody really knew,” Sweetney said. “I was suffering really bad. I was in New York, battling this while the media was writing articles about me, and I felt like I had nowhere to go.”
Sweetney, 34, spent two seasons with the Knicks before being traded to Chicago in 2005. He lasted two with the Bulls before moving his basketball career overseas.