Former Warriors and Kings center Willie Cauley-Stein has revealed the reason behind his NBA “personal leave” in 2021 and subsequent league exit in 2022.
Speaking to The Athletic's Kyle Tucker, the 31-year-old reflected on his journey from a serious drug addiction to finding happiness during his road to recovery.
And despite the struggle, he’s lucky to share his story.
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“I could easily be dead,” Cauley-Stein told Tucker.
Cauley-Stein admitted he began abusing substances in the summer of 2019 after three of his friends were shot – one of which was killed – in Sacramento.
At the time, he had just signed a near league-minimum deal with Golden State after not receiving a new deal from the Kings following a formidable end to his rookie contract.
He resorted to what he thought were bootleg Percocet pills to cope.
Golden State Warriors
“That kind of started a spiral of mental health,” Cauley-Stein told Tucker. “Trying to deal with that and hoop at the same time — for a new team, on a bad deal, and then my wife got pregnant — it was just too many weird things and big changes, and I got on the pain pills trying to just run away from reality.”
Cauley-Stein’s issue worsened after learning about his grandmother’s bone cancer diagnosis.
And on Dec. 1, 2021, less than a week after his grandmother’s passing, the center checked into rehab.
By then, Cauley-Stein was with the Dallas Mavericks, where he appeared in a mere 18 games, averaging career lows in points (1.9), rebounds (2.1) and minutes played (9.8) while shooting a career-low 46% from the floor.
The No. 6 overall pick of the 2015 NBA Draft was taking pills during practice to avoid a withdrawal. But little did he know that the pills he was consuming were laced with fentanyl, a substance 50 times more potent than heroin and linked to countless overdose deaths in the country.
“I didn’t know until I turned myself in,” Cauley-Stein told Tucker. “I looked at my wife and said, ‘Oh, my God’ because I hear stories all the time about kids going to a party, never taking a drug before, deciding to pop a Percocet, and it ends up being fentanyl, and they die.
“From one pill. Dude, I was taking hundreds of them, for months and years. It could’ve so easily been me.”
Cauley-Stein has turned the page since and managed to play 13 games with the Houston Rockets’ G League affiliate during the 2022-23 season.
Now, he hopes he can make an NBA return and stay strong and clean for his wife and kids.
“I had to get right for them,” Cauley-Stein told Tucker. “It’s funny, I’m only 30, but my kids don’t really know me as this basketball star.
“What’s crazy, though, is I’m doing the best I’ve done in like 10 years. This is the best I’ve felt, probably, since I left Kentucky. And there’s still a lot of game in this body. I’m rested, I’m fresh. I’m ready.”
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