Delonte West is a former NBA player for the Cavs, Mavericks, and Celtics. He made millions of dollars playing pro basketball and was recently seen in a parking lot walking around in a robe and no shoes. This guy has had other odd incidents. He’s been evasive about having sex with the mother of Lebron James while they were teammates. He was arrested while driving a motorcycle with two guns on him and a a shotgun in a guitar case. During the 2011 NBA lockout, he applied at a Home Depot store.
It’s hard to feel too much sympathy for him.
There’s been claims of bipolar depression associated with West. If that’s true, it might account for some of the odd behavior. It wouldn’t account for sleeping with a teammate’s (who happens to be the biggest star in the NBA) mother. Depression also wouldn’t be the cause of blowing through 16 million dollars, even if you discount that by 50% for taxes and agent fees. With his salary and top notch medical insurance, he had the ability to get help, if indeed mental illness is to blame.
The wealthier and more famous you are, the easier it is to succumb to deep mental illness.
One of the worst things about mental illness is that you often can’t recognize it yourself, or else you can’t bring yourself to do anything about it, or else you don’t want to do anything about it. You need friends and family who care about you.
People who are fabulously wealthy are often surrounded by leeches and sycophants who have absolutely no interest in anything other than keeping the gravy train going. Likewise, agents and managers don’t give a crap about the talent’s mind as long as the talent’s body is scoring points and pulling in a check.
I’m not saying that this was the case here, but “he was rich and so should easily have gotten help” doesn’t apply here like it might for a physical illness.
I saw Delonte West play a couple times when he was in college at St. Joseph’s. Kind of kept an eye on his career from that point and it has been colorful, to say the least. I can’t believe it’s been 4 years since he’s been out of the NBA, but apparently he had a stint in the D-League last year. I’m sure he could play in Europe or China and make a living if he could pull it together.
Everyone seems very quick to diagnose mental illness based on these incidents. Personally if I need to get something out of the car and it’s not far away, I’ll go get it without bothering to get changed.
Maybe this is just a case of an slightly-eccentric millionaire with a taste for older women who likes to exercise his second amendment rights?
Sexual misconduct and wild spending are indeed common symptoms of bipolar disorder. The Mayo Clinic lists one of the diagnostic symptoms of a manic/hypomanic episode (the “up” part of bipolar) as “Doing things that are unusual and that have a high potential for painful consequences — for example, unrestrained buying sprees, sexual indiscretions or foolish business investments.”
Reckless and even dangerous behaviors, thinking you are god-like and have superhuman powers, and detachment from reality are pretty classic signs of mania. That doesn’t mean he is bipolar, but certainly that disease could account for most or all of his odd behavior.
As others have noted, recognizing that you yourself have mental illness is incredibly difficult. With full-blown bipolar mania, you’re on the top of the world! Nothing and nobody can tell you what to do, because you are the best, the greatest, the most wonderful person who has ever lived, and ordinary rules simply don’t apply. Certainly there’s nothing wrong with you! (or so the thinking goes.) If you are calm, reasonable, rational, well-organized, and have the ability to self-analyze realistically, you probably don’t have mental illness in the first place.
