wWhen the Golden State Warriors selected Chris Washburn with the No. 3 overall pick in 1986, it must have been a dream come true. Instead, it was the worst thing that could have happened to the 6-foot-11 NC State prospect.
“I smiled because they were paying me to be there,” Washburn, a three-time high school All-American, told the Guardian. “But I felt lonely.”
Oakland was as far as you could get from Washburn’s hometown of Hickory, North Carolina. Hope the team could help. He was on the roster with players like Sleepy Floyd and Chris Mullin. In the preseason, rookie Washburn scored brilliantly. He had a starting role in the team. Everything was going well – until it happened.
“But the drugs worked,” says Washburn. “I wasn’t into basketball. A lot of times, I would sit on the bench and watch the clock tick because as soon as the fourth quarter was over, I could go out to get drunk.”
The NBA’s so-called “cocaine era” has been well documented. But while a lot of attention has been paid to the athletes who lost their money and standing in the league, not enough attention has been paid to the reasons why. Sure, drugs were everywhere, from Hollywood film sets to New York City discos. But there were real reasons why people turned to him.
“Nobody paid attention,” says Washburn, who played only two NBA seasons despite being so highly publicized. “Now, if a team sees a player getting weak, they’ll step up. But back then, no one did that. Cocaine, crack were new. They didn’t know what to look for.”
Washburn says he ultimately blames himself for the way his brief career turned out. “I just had to stop,” he says. “But when I was doing crack I felt more alive.” Nevertheless, as a young player he felt a real sense of loneliness and depression.
Washburn, who averaged 17.6 points and 6.7 boards as a sophomore at NC State despite several off-court controversies, says, “When I came into the league, the NBA was trying to clean up the ’70s image. They said there were two things you couldn’t do: cocaine and heroin. That’s all they had to say.”
Despite clear, strong warnings, many players felt the pain of self-inflicted wounds, from multi-time All-Stars like Michael Ray Richardson, who was the first player banned for life by the NBA for drugs, to youngsters like Washburn, who despite using frequently said he had trouble using it. “I couldn’t tolerate drugs,” the 59-year-old says of his playing days.
The big man’s body was broken, his game suffered. He missed practice, lost focus. He fell out of the league – banned for drugs – after just two seasons. Washburn played in only 72 regular-season games along with six playoff games.
“I was a young guy, very impressionable,” says Washburn. “A lot of guys my size, we grew up pretty fast physically, but mentally, it took some guys like me a while. I made a lot of mistakes.”
He says Washburn first used cocaine in college with Len Bias. Famously, Bias died in 1986 at the age of 22, two days after being drafted one slot ahead of Washburn by the Boston Celtics. Many say that Bias was the rival that Michael Jordan never had. Washburn says Sr. Bias was who he wanted to be – a star with the world at his fingertips.
“I’m thinking that’s what we should be doing at that level,” Washburn says, thinking about trying drugs with Bias in a dorm room.
But even when Bias died of a drug overdose when Boston selected him No. 2, Washburn was not motivated to quit. The two were not best friends, so Washburn said it was just another unfortunate title. Soon, he was the same way.
After the NBA, Washburn moved up quickly. “I was only drunk on days that ended in ‘y,'” he says now, laughing hard. “When I was down I got high. When I was happy I got high,” he says.
He lived on the streets for a few years. He ate food from the trash. He stole everything from perfume to lunch meat. He went to jail. He married, but after some time his wife left their Houston home for a less hectic life in Dallas. Washburn stopped in Houston to get high. He did not have any property. Wherever he could find a bench in the park, he would sleep there.
“I could have gone to John Lucas Treatment Center (in Houston),” Washburn says. “But I didn’t want treatment.”
He says his problems did not come from a broken childhood home or the abuse he faced early in life. Washburn grew up in a two-parent home that prided itself on discipline. In this way, the former NBA top pick was truly a rebel.
“I was able to go out and do things that I had only seen on TV or people talking about,” Washburn says. “It was an adrenaline rush, yes. But also a learning process.”
Today, the former No. 3 pick talks to youth about the dangers of drug addiction. He also says that he has tried to reach out to leagues like the NBA to talk to troubled stars like Ja Morant, but he was not given the opportunity.
“I also got caught with guns,” Washburn says. “I want to talk to him. What I mean to say is that it’s okay to make mistakes, but don’t make mistakes.” Same Mistakes again.”
Washburn is one of those guys who has seen it all. He calls this understanding “both sides of the fence.” Many people have experienced poverty and many people have experienced wealth. Very few people have seen both – but Washburn has.
“I always thought the party would never end,” he says. “But you can have money at 20 and then at 50 you can be completely broke and homeless.”
A player’s results often depend on the quality of their relationships. In Oakland, Washburn’s life was devoid of family or close friends. He did not interact with his team or coach, the famously angry George Karl. Then within a few months everything was over.
“Today,” says Washburn, “I have a small circle, but it’s one I can rely on – that’s all I was really looking for back then.”
Now, Washburn is married and living in his hometown of Hickory. She recently co-wrote a candid new memoir, out of boundsWhich throws light on his story. Thankfully, the book has a happy ending – the former high school standout is alive and well.
“Even with basketball,” he says, “everything has an expiration date for me. Someone asked me if basketball worked out, would I play 15 or 20 years like LeBron? And I said, no. When I’ve given a game enough, I go away and do something different.”
For the former top prospect, his A-ha The moment came when his father died. His mother was alone and Washburn had to take care of her. Due to her own medical problems, she had to get power of attorney and handle her finances.
“Although I had stolen from him and my father in the past,” Washburn says, “this time it was all on me. If I had been a person who still wanted to get high, we would have been homeless. That’s why I say the Man Upstairs makes no mistakes. He brought me to a point of cleaning everything up.”
Before this, Washburn had been to rehab 14 times and it never stuck (he listed his dealers as family and they came to visit him with a score). But once she had to take care of her mother, she started to stop.
“I was tired of being broke,” says Washburn, who by then had four sons. including the future NBA player. “I wanted to be more of a junkie than Chris Washburn. So, I had to make some changes.”
With her new book, Washburn says she wrote the memoir to help others like her.
“I knew there were other Chris Washburns out there,” he says. “Not just on the court but off the court as well. Now I see my message starting to get across. You can only hold some things in for so long – if it means getting out there, then it will.”