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“I suffered sexual violence”: the chilling testimony of a former Nets

Some players sometimes come a long way when making their debut in the league, often having had a difficult childhood. But a former Nets player had a real nightmare as a young man, confessing a few years ago to having suffered sexual violence. The testimony is poignant.

If the nets can today count on a squad that looks like a superteam, with Kevin Durant and Kyrie Irving at its head, it’s not the first time in their history that they have played quality basketball. In the early 2000s, they had reached the NBA Finals with Jason Kidd in charge, while they were still on the side of New Jersey. Another ten years earlier, it was a team led by a certain Drazen Petrovic who panicked the counters on the floors.

A real offensive phenomenon before being tragically killed in a car accident at the age of 28, “Mozart” was not, however, the only player to shine then since he was also accompanied by Derrick Coleman and Kenny Anderson, forming a rather terrifying triplet in attack. The second in particular delivered a nice career in the lead, capable of shooting at almost 19 points and 10 assists on average in his prime.

Kenny Anderson’s tragic confession about his childhood

If he had no less than 8 franchises after his first five seasons at the Nets, “Mr. Chibbs” can generally be proud of his career. This is all the more the case when we are talking about a man who had a particularly complicated childhood, near New York. Interviewed by SB Nation In 2013, Anderson then confided for the first time the horrors he had experienced during his young years, he who was the victim of sexual abuse:

I’ll admit it on this show. I was sexually abused twice. The first time was about eight years old because I had moved from the neighborhood where we lived in Queens, and that’s where it happened. He was a neighborhood guy, lived in a nearby block… Then we moved to LeFrak City… It happened there again.

The testimony is obviously terrible to hear and we hardly dare to imagine what the young boy he was at the time of the events must have felt. If he does not reveal if he had a psychological follow-up thereafter, Anderson affirmed however that having been in the NBA helped him a lot to recover. He also hoped to be able to break a taboo through his story, and if possible become a support for other athletes who have experienced the same traumatic experience:

I don’t think it killed me like it killed other kids who were molested. You can really take a lot out of a child for the rest of their life. I think that without the fame, without the notoriety of basketball, it would have been more difficult for me. The bottom line is that if I was able to help someone and they saw that Kenny Anderson was assaulted and is talking about it, now people will come out of the shadows and maybe be able to tell their story.

We can only salute the strength of character and determination of Kenny Anderson, who experienced an ordeal growing up near New York. The subject he addresses bluntly remains unfortunately still relatively little discussed in the NBA, but when we see stars like Kevin Love openly talking about depression, maybe that will change in the future.

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