Earlier this week, VICE Sports released a video of Ty Lawson hanging out and speaking on a variety of topics that was shot during the NBA Finals in early June. In a way, it’s a bittersweet document of Lawson feeling relaxed before the tornado that hit his life soon after. In another way, it’s an incredibly ironic video, where Lawson describes how his life could have gone wrong, just weeks before it actually did.
Lawson is currently in a rehab facility after his second DUI arrest of 2015. Since he’s been there, he’s been traded to the Rockets and had his struggles with alcohol publicized by his former boss, Denver Nuggets CEO Josh Kroenke. It has not been a good summer for Ty, ever since he Instagrammed himself smoking a hookah and predicting a trade to the Kings when the Nuggets drafted Emmanuel Mudiay.
Knowing what lay in store for him in the future, we can see the unwitting foreshadowing of Lawson’s musings on the “NBA lifestyle” from a lavish, Los Angeles-area home:
“I was scared of the NBA, scared of the lifestyle. That s**t is ridiculous… If I was 18, 19 years old, living like this, I don’t think I would have made it. [Michael] Beasley, he got drafted with the number two pick, went to Miami, and it was like, ‘Oh, why’s he acting like this? Why’s he [trails off]? He was 19 years old in Miami, and you gave him five million dollars. What do you think he’s going to do with it? He’s gonna go crazy. I would go crazy.
I’m blessed that I went to Denver, just because it’s like, real chill. If I went to Miami, I don’t think I would have made it.”
That’s chilling stuff, considering the situation in which Lawson finds himself. He is awaiting trial on his DUI charges, and potential discipline from the league, so it’s a mystery when he’ll actually be on the court again. But Lawson’s still lucky, since he’s had the chance to establish himself as a very good NBA player before his issues with alcohol caught up with him. Now a Houston Rocket, Lawson will probably have the chance to change the narrative surrounding him back to what he can do on the court, rather than what will happen to him in court.
VICE’s video also touched on Lawson’s first time partying with white people and the silly slipper/sneaker hybrids that his friend designed.
