Los Angeles Lakers guard Dion Waiters opened up about depression, mental health and the plane incident via The Player’s Tribune.
Depression is a serious and seriously misunderstood issue in society that’s been prevalent for years now, and that’s especially the case during these strange times of quarantine and social distancing, without sports or entertainment to help take our mind of things.
With all this extra down time to reflect, Los Angeles Lakers guard Dion Waiters decided to open up about his struggles with depression, his mental health and what really happened with the infamous plane incident that earned him a 10-game suspension from the Miami Heat.
Even better, he told his story himself, using The Player’s Tribune to open up on his own terms.
As part of a series called “24,” where players open up about 24 truths that have shaped their lives in honor of the late Kobe Bryant, Waiters immediately dove into his struggles with depression:
“Even the hardest motherf***ers in the world go through depression, man. No cap. You know, I think sometimes the world needs to be reminded that we’re not superheroes. I came from the bottom. I seen it all. But when I go home at night, I’m just like you. I go through depression, just like you. I go through anxiety, just like you. This last year and a half, I done been through it.”
Waiters has certainly had a tumultuous season, earning multiple suspensions from the Heat before being traded, including the aforementioned 10-game penalty for taking a drug-infused gummy on a team flight. Waiters owned up to that incident and shouldered the blame for what happened.
“The plane incident in Miami? It’s on me. I own that. It was idiotic on my behalf — point-blank, period. What’s crazy is, my whole life I been a leader. I’m not a follower. Pat knows me. He knows I don’t do drugs. But sometimes when you’re going through dark times, you can fall trap to things you’d never do in your right mind.”
However, it was also reported that Waiters suffered a seizure on that flight. The 28-year-old guard denies that ever happened.
“I never had a seizure, though. Ask the doctors. Ask my Heat teammates. They can speak on it. For that b.s. to come out, it ain’t right. I made a mistake, but for someone to leak that, and for my family to hear it? S**t. It ain’t right.”
Over the course of his “24” entry, Waiters also writes about how his father was shot when he was eight years old, how his family has helped him with his mental health, how Instagram is a “s**tshow” based on whether his team wins or loses, how he doesn’t sleep and that even when he was fat, “I was still getting B U C K E T S, you feel me?”
Fifty years from now, what does Dion Waiters want to be remembered for?
“That motherf***er was always himself. If they say that, I’ll be happy. If they say that, then I don’t care about nothing else.”