How a promising athlete chose between two dreams
By W. H. Hinkley
ST. LOUIS (June 3, 2007) — Darius Manley still has a perfect jumpshot.
It’s just before noon on an unusually cool Sunday, and Manley, 32, is putting up shots you only see in dreams. They arc, rotate just enough to find their balance, then fall through the net like stones into water.
On this Monsanto neighborhood court, he can barely be heard. He glides about the asphalt with nothing more than a faint scrape. Even his shots seem to make as little sound as possible.
If you didn’t know anything about him, you’d think he were merely obsessed — a man whose game is nothing less than an art.
“I haven’t missed a shot in three days,” he says, finally stopping.
And yet, he isn’t merely obsessed. Every shot is taken with the enormous weight of a constant reminder — of the life he left behind, of the life he once unapologetically threw away.
The reason? He merely traded one dream for another: the life of a basketball star for the life of a heroin addict.
“Getting high out of my mind seemed more attractive than playing pro ball,” he says, dabbing his forehead with a towel. “So I gave it all up — no questions asked.”
He’s been clean almost five years, but he occasionally still feels a stirring inside, one he’s afraid could bring it all back. The one thing that keeps him straight is his 77-year-old diabetic grandmother, Althea, who relies on him for just about everything.
“Sometimes I’d love to escape from it all,” he says. “But I spent almost 10 years being selfish. I spent way too much of my life escaping. I couldn’t do that to her. I’m all she’s got.”
The same could be said about her. She’s been caring for him since he was 4. That’s when his mother ran off. He’s never known his father, who’s been in and out of prison the last 20 years.
Now rested, Manley takes a shot, this time from far out, and nails it. A few men on the other side of the court are staring. One finally yells, “We need this court.” Manley calmly gets off. “No use in beating a dead horse,” he says, and he’s right. Not even another lifetime of practice could make his shot any better.
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Sobriety is a blessing, but it takes getting used to. I still find myself getting uneasy. When you’ve been as high as I was for so long, clarity’s a strange thing.
— Darius Manley, recovering heroin addict and once-promising high school basketball star
On the table is a pile of old newspaper clippings. Manley’s been looking through them the last few hours. They’re of his days at Normandy High School, where he starred as a point guard.
“Scored 50 there,” he says, shaking his head. “Nobody scores 50 in high school.”
“Had 38 points and 10 steals that game,” he says, eagerly holding up another yellowed clipping. “I must have been fouled 20 times that game. They couldn’t stop me.”
His junior year, college scouts from the country’s biggest schools started flocking to see him. That happened to be his best year — 33 points, 8 rebounds, 8 assists and 6 steals per contest. That was also the year he dropped 50 on Sumner.
“I still can’t believe how perfect that game was,” he says with a vague smile. “My teammates just kept getting me the ball. I couldn’t miss. I was 20 for 23, 10 for 10 from the line. I made 8 of 9 from the 3-point line. I was 7 for 7 in the fourth quarter. Can you believe that?
“And the best part is, there were at least four major scouts there that day. They came out to see how I’d do against Sumner — a big, bad North St. Louis school.”
He stops for a moment, aware that he’s describing the highlight of his life.
“Can you imagine anyone having anything more going for him?” He scratches his head, then: “Better yet, can you imagine anyone having more to lose?”
The future seemed already written for Manley: assault the record books for one more year in high school; go to a big college, where the large, wild crowds would adore him; enter the pros, where he’d blossom into nothing less than a demigod — worshipped, respected, remembered.
And yet no more than a month later he’d stumble upon what he’d come to believe was a much better dream.
“I was at a party one night — it was after the season had ended — and I went into a room to take a nap,” he says, visibly angry at the memory of it all. “This guy and these two girls were shooting up. I sat down on the bed. I don’t know why. The next thing I know I’m asking them to hook me up.”
He’ll never forget what it felt like.
“Warm,” he says, shaking his head. “The nicest, warmest feeling in the world. Your eyes roll back, and then you just float and settle. Your body seems to just settle to the bottom of some quiet, warm place. And you think it’ll last until you die. You think — I must be dying. But you’re all right with that. It’s good. Dying seems good. You just lie in it and forget the world.
“It feels . . . like the world’s melting.”