Every dribble, every pass, every shot was scrutinized. Not winning state championships was failure. His grandfather, father, and older brother had a history of basketball success and he was the next in line for Durfee basketball, his high school in Fall River, Massachusetts. Herren felt the pressure from the beginning. Herren’s memoir provides the reader an up-close experience with pressure, addiction, and life on the edge but also the power of family, friends, and the human spirit. Cynically, the pressures associated with the athletic life that chose him lead to alcohol abuse, drug addiction, and death, at least for a moment. He was a nationally prominent high school basketball star from a small, hoops-crazed town who went on to play big-time college ball and professionally in the National Basketball Association and overseas. Basketball Junkie: A Memoir begins here and details Herren’s double life, one side in the very public realm of athletics and the other outside of the spotlight, behind closed doors. Chris Herren was “dead for thirty seconds,” according to the officer that found him unresponsive behind the wheel of his parked car in Fall River, Massachusetts (p.
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