Profile Of Future First Round Pick Chris Herren

[Way Of The Ray <wayray@ix.netcom.com>]

        11.22.98 00:03:44
        BILL REYNOLDS
        LIFE ON THE REBOUND

By BILL REYNOLDS:
Providence Journal Sports Writer

A year after Chris Herren left Fresno State team
to deal with substance-abuse problems, the Fall River
native is back on track

A year ago Chris Herren faced the worst public moment
of his life.

In an emotional press conference shown on ESPN, he
announced he was leaving the Fresno State basketball
team to deal with his substance-abuse problem. The best
player in Fall River's rich basketball history was
saying through layers of pain and regret that he had
``slipped up'' and was leaving the team to get some
help. A few days later, on Thanksgiving, he left for a
Utah rehabilitation hospital. He was there for nearly
three weeks.

Now it's a year later. And no one one could ever have
envisioned what's happened to Herren.

He's been profiled in Sports Illustrated and by ESPN.
He was the centerpiece of a Rolling Stone article on
the Fresno State program, complete with a picture
worthy of a rock star. He's been interviewed by Mike
Wallace, as part of a 60 Minutes segment on Fresno
State basketball. He's also prominently featured in a
new documentary film on last year's Fresno State's team
called Between The Madness, which will air Thanksgiving
night on NESN.

He's also been a first-team Western Athletic Conference
selection, flirted with the idea of leaving school
early and entering the NBA draft, and changed his
position at Fresno to point guard.

And that's merely the public part.

Then again, Chris Herren always has played the public
part very well. It's the private life that's always
been more difficult, a walk through a personal
minefield that's included a substance-abuse problem, a
season-ending injury his first year at Boston College,
the transfer to Fresno, the salvaging of his career
3,000 miles away fron home, the hell-and-back journey
to rehab, and the pressures that have come from playing
in such a scrutinized program as Fresno State. The
eight years of Chris Herren's life read like fiction.

``What happens on the court isn't everything anymore,''
he said last March. ``What happens off it is just as
important.''

So his biggest problem when he came back from rehab
last December was to find a different way to live.

Before it had been simple. He went out. To bars. To
nightclubs. Went out because he won. Went out because
he lost. Went out because that's what you do when
you're in college and you're wired and your demons are
out of their cages and running around in your head and
you can't sleep. Went out because that's what he always
had done, and he really knew nothing else. Even if he
always knew it was a dance with the devil, something
that always had the potential to steal his career.

``I went to Utah to change my life,'' Herren says.
``That was the point. So looking back on it, that press
conference was a very good day, because I didn't run
from my problem. I dealt with it and I moved on. And
it's not anyone's business anymore. Last year it was,
because I was leaving the team. But not now. Now it's a
personal thing. Myself and my family.''

Yet there's no question his life has significantly
changed in the past year.

``It's a 180-degree turnaround,'' he says. ``It's not
the prototypical college lifestyle. My life has totally
changed.''

And it's not simply his sobriety.

Last summer he married his high-school girlfriend
Heather Gray, who grew up in neighboring Somerset. They
are expecting a baby boy in the spring.

``Basketball is not the biggest thing in my life
anymore,'' says Herren. ``It's not the most important
thing. Far from it. It's back where it should be. I
play as hard as I can, then I leave it in the gym. I
don't bring it home with me. That wouldn't be fair. And
if I score one point my wife thinks I've had a great
game. She doesn't know the difference and doesn't care.
Her attitude is that we'll be all right no matter what
happens in basketball.''

That's not insignificant.

There's always been pressure on Herren. It's the price
he paid for his talent, the price he paid for being
billed as Durfee High School's next great player when
he was only in the ninth grade. Eventually the rent
comes due, even on a gift Herren already has used to
take him far from the small gyms of his adolescence to
some of the biggest basketball arenas in the country.

But there's little question this is a big year in
Herren's basketball life. Last spring he entered his
name in the NBA draft when there was speculation he
might be a late first-round pick, then changed his mind
a few weeks later. He felt he owed Fresno coach Jerry
Tarkanian a debt of loyalty and that a good senior year
would push him higher up in the first round in next
June's draft.

Now he must prove to NBA scouts that not only can be
play the point, but that he's outrun his past. That all
the off-court dramas are over.

Playing point guard is an adjustment. Herren is being
asked to pass first, score second. In Fresno's second
game he had 16 points and 10 assists on only seven
shots. He says he's yet to know how assertive he should
be.

He is one of only two returning starters from last
year's team that began with great expectations only to
self-destruct, as numerous drug suspensions took their
toll. Once again Fresno State is a team full of talent,
a team in search of chemistry. This time Herren is
being asked to provide it, no small task for a program
that's become synonymous with turmoil.

``My job is is to make sure everyone else gets
involved,'' he says.

His more important job, though, is to maintain this new
life that began a year ago, the night he told the
television cameras he had slipped up, the night he
began taking control of his life. It's a job that has
nothing to do with basketball, and everything to do
with his life. This life that's now so different than
it was just a year ago.

``All of that seems so long ago now,'' says Chris
Herren. ``I have a great wife and I have the biggest
gift in the world coming to me in the spring. I
couldn't ask for anything better.''

The basketball will take care of itself.


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