Princewill Pius
In a 2019 interview with Bleacher Report, Dennis Rodman opened up about his struggles with depression and discussed his thoughts of suicide in 1993. “I wanted to be loved by somebody or someone because I was never loved by my mother or father because they were never there. So when I got to Detroit, they embraced me as one,” Rodman explained. But after the Bad Boys team was “disassemble[d]” and his coach was let go, Rodman hit a low point. “I was all by myself. I had nobody to turn to,” he said.
He then gave details about that fateful day. “I wrote a note and went to the parking lot of the Palace. I had a gun rack, and I had a gun in my car. I had it in my hand. But for some reason, I played this music,” he explained. “It didn’t have anything to do with basketball. It had to do with this love that I wanted, and it suddenly just left me.”
Rodman fell asleep to the music and when he woke up, “all the cops and everyone” were surrounding him. “I didn’t know what was going on. I totally forgot I had a gun in my hand,” he explained. “I didn’t expect the NBA to be like that,” he continued. “I didn’t expect teams to just trade players and you say, ‘OK, this is a business,’ and forget about it. That was what drove me to that point.”
If you or someone you know is having suicidal thoughts, please call the National Suicide Prevention Lifeline at 1-800-273-TALK (8255) or text HOME to the Crisis Text Line at 741741.
Written by: Nicki
