‘Heartbreaking’
Former Lobos star Giddens, who nearly died in ’05, wishes he could have shared life lessons with White
The nightmares never really fade.
They linger, coming at odd times to serve as a reminder of just how thin the margin is between life and death, of how one seemingly harmless decision can cascade into a horror movie without rhyme or reason.
Fifteen years removed from an experience that nearly ended in his death, former University of New Mexico star J.R. Giddens was jolted headlong into his past when news reached him Saturday morning about the killing of Fedonta “JB” White.
White, an 18-year-old Santa Fe High graduate, had been shot to death just hours before at a party on the outskirts of town, tragically cutting short the life of a teen whose next step was a move to Albuquerque and a spot on the Lobos basketball team.
The 6-foot-8 White, a four-star recruit, was scheduled to start classes at UNM this month and officially become part of the program he’d verbally committed to nearly a year ago.
In so many ways, White was the kind of generational homegrown talent that had the entire state wondering just how far he could take the Lobos. He was hailed as the next great thing, a nationally recognized prep star who chose to stay home instead of pulling the sports ejection handle and heading out of state.
For Giddens, he saw a young man who had all the talent in the world, a player who would likely have grown into a college star and followed it with a seven-figure contract in the pros.
Giddens should know because he was once in White’s shoes.
“The whole thing had me thinking about what I went through, you know?” Giddens said Saturday afternoon. “What happened to me shouldn’t have happened and what happened to him, no way. It’s sad.”
Giddens parlayed a McDonald’s All-American prep career in Oklahoma City into a scholarship to the blue blood program at Kansas. By age 20, he figured he’d shed his amateur status and take his 6-foot-5 skills to the NBA.
But then came the night of May 19, 2005, when he joined a handful of friends at a Lawrence, Kan., bar. Within a few hours he was fighting for his life, blood gushing from a stab wound from a four-inch blade. It was the result of an altercation with a man named Jeremiah Creswell. After a brief scu±e inside the bar, the fight resumed outside and Creswell sunk the knife into Giddens’ leg, severing an artery in his
right calf.
“The doctors said I almost bled out and then they told me I’d never play ball again,” Giddens said. “All that because of a fight. It never should have happened.”
Details aside, Giddens immediately likened his situation to White’s: a young kid in a social environment with friends that ended in a disagreement — and an attack.
“I was lucky,” Giddens said. “That was the reason I left that place and came here.”
Here was UNM and a two-year stint with the Lobos from 2006-08 after Giddens decided the NBA could wait. He used most of the 18 months between his final game with Kansas and first with New Mexico rehabbing and recovering from stab wound that left him with 30 stitches, an issue with his Achilles tendon — and a lifetime of perspective.
Without hesitation, Giddens said he would do anything to have been with White when he decided to leave home on Friday night. Giddens wishes he could have sat next to him, looked him in the eye and shared the wisdom of a man who once rode into a similar situation White was on a collision course with.
Don’t do it. Don’t go. Spend time at home and look to the future.
“The thing is, and people are going to say this a lot, kids that young feel invincible, that nothing’s ever going to happen to them,” Giddens said, pausing to gather his thoughts.
“I learned it the tough way. Nothing great happens that late at night. Some of us have been there and we’re more aware of what to do, but when you’re that young you just don’t see it. You can’t be mad at what decisions were made but in those situations you just never know.”
Giddens ended his UNM career as the co-Mountain West Conference player of the year. He was drafted in the first round by the Boston Celtics a few months later. A dozen years down the road, he is still going strong, having spent much of the last decade earning millions of dollars playing professionally overseas.
“When I looked at JB, I saw a long, athletic player who was only going to do great things,” Giddens said. “It was an NBA body and, really, he had the NBA mind. He was going places. You could just see it.”
In the cruelest twist of fate, we’ll never know if Giddens was right. Cut down just as he was about to take that next step in life, White will forever be remembered as one of the best basketball players Santa Fe has ever seen — and one it will forever miss.
“Can’t say this enough, you know, I just wish young guys like that could see there’s nothing good that comes from being in a fight and nothing good with being in a place where you or someone else could get hurt,” Giddens said. “You wish you could tell them that but, yeah, sometimes those are things they just have to do themselves. Man, it’s heartbreaking.”