Tyler Terryyoung NBA player chosen with the call No. 31 in the 2020 Draft by the Dallas Mavericks, announced via social media through a long post that you have decided to retire due to anxiety and complicated mental state into which he fell since he turned pro. “The darkest moment of my life”, he says in a heartfelt way, also underlining how thanks to basketball – the sport that has formed a large part of my identity – Terry was able to meet his closest friends and obtain the greatest satisfactions, as well as giving himself moments of joy that will always remain in his mind. But at the same time it represented a huge black hole in which the player who came out of Stanford has sunk, “to the point that instead of strengthening me, he began to destroy me” reads the post.
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Then there is the story of what anxiety brought into his life, of the destruction and feeling of bewilderment felt by a player who had, only in theory, an entire world before him that he could conquer: “Thoughts that continued constantly creeping into my mind, waking up feeling nauseous and finding myself struggling to breathe normally due to the huge boulder that sat on my chest every night that seemed to weigh more than I could carry. This is just a brief description of the anxiety this sport has caused me, and while I am grateful for every door it has opened for me, I can no longer continue this fight for something I’ve lost the love of”. A story in its own way that is a lesson from a player who in his debut season played the field with the Texans on 11 occasions, last year he took to the floor for two games with the Memphis Grizzlies and in this last regular season had yet to make his debut. An NBA career ended before it even startedat 22, due to problems that one is not always able to face.
