Above the Noise

From one of the most outspoken and respected NBA athletes comes a groundbreaking and remarkable memoir chronicling a very public struggle with depression, in the hopes that other people will not suffer alone.
 
<&ldquo;As men, and especially Black men, we don&rsquo;t talk about our mental health enough. We struggle to admit when things aren&rsquo;t okay, even when it&rsquo;s obvious to everybody around us. I&rsquo;ve seen how toxic that can become. I&rsquo;ve experienced it myself, keeping everything under wraps until your head and heart are full of fire and rage.&rdquo;<

DeMar DeRozan, six-time NBA All-Star, has been called a &ldquo;basketball savant&rdquo; (<ESPN<) and &ldquo;the best closer in the NBA&rdquo; (<GQ<)&mdash;but when he went public with his depression, it sparked a conversation that reached far beyond the court. By breaking the stigma of speaking out, he added a new, seldom-heard voice to the mental health dialogue: a successful Black male athlete, openly naming his pain and advocating for others to do the same.

Now it&rsquo;s time to tell the full story. Born and raised in Compton, DeRozan was no stranger to hardship&mdash;living in poverty, losing friends to gang violence. In worn-out school gyms and community centers, fueled by hunger and a desire to prove himself, he started to rise, but doubts followed. In <Above the Noise, <DeRozan opens up about his proudest triumphs and the times he felt so weighed down he couldn''t get out of bed. He reflects on what it took to make a name for himself in a new country after getting drafted by the Toronto Raptors, the pressure of playing with veteran athletes as a twenty-year-old rookie, and the pain of losing role models.

From a scared, angry kid to a confident father of five, DeRozan traces his journey to basketball stardom and the forces that honed him into the player&mdash;and the slowly healing person&mdash;he is today. It will encourage anyone who has ever felt alone in their struggles and inspire people to rise above the noise and speak their truth....

Autorentext

DeMar DeRozan is a six-time NBA All-Star and two-time gold medalist for the United States Men’s Basketball Team. A father of five, DeRozan frequently returns to community centers in Compton, California, where he once practiced as a teenager, to mentor the next generation of basketball players.

Dave Zarum is an award-winning sportswriter and editor and the author of NBA 75: The Definitive History. He lives in Toronto.

Leseprobe
Chapter 1

I’m my mother’s only child. The doctors told her they didn’t think she could get pregnant or have a safe birth. It’s why she always called me “The Blessed One.” The rest of my family—cousins, aunts, uncles—called me that because I was one of the few kids fortunate enough to have what it takes to make it out of my environment. I was born on August 7, 1989, in Compton, California. My mom named me “DeMar” after her brother Lemar, who was shot and killed when he was twenty.

Diane Dykes, my mom, was born and raised in Compton. She’s a tough woman—you’d have to be the way she was raised—who lives with lupus, an immune-system disease that causes severe joint pain. It’s been that way since I was young. But she doesn’t let it hold her down. Mom used to work manual labor jobs when I was a kid. She worked at a factory assembling thermostats until I was ten. That’s when she got into an accident when a machine landed on her leg. It was real bad and she had to get screws put into her foot.

Mom’s family is really big. She has six siblings—and everybody was close. Growing up I was surrounded by her family. Cousins, aunties, uncles, grandparents. They were my whole universe. Mom has a twin sister, Donna, who was like a second mother to me. The two of them were staples in the neighborhood. Everybody loved and respected my mom. As I got older and she wanted to shield me more and more from the gang scene that dominated the Compton streets, the whole community knew to respect her wishes. I think part of that was because of the respect and admiration my uncles received. Two of my mom’s brothers were high-ranking gang members. Uncle Kevin, like most everyone I grew up with, was a member of the Crips. The other, Uncle Lemar, was in the Bloods. (Technically he was her half-brother and lived with my grandfather in a different part of the city.) Where I grew up, it seemed like everybody had ties to one gang or another.

My dad, Frank, was from a small town in Louisiana called Vidalia. With the exception of the poverty, Vidalia is as different—and rural—as you can get. Dad was Old Country through and through. Hardworking. Unforgiving. Never complained. People called him Big Dog. He was large, tall, and imposing; he knew how to occupy space. Big Dog was a football player—a middle linebacker—and all-around athlete in his younger days. Matter of fact, Dad was the first Black player on the Vidalia High School basketball team. In his first game, he grabbed thirty-six rebounds. After playing college football at Grambling State in Louisiana, he did what everybody did: headed west to California looking for a better living. He settled in Compton, not far from the block where my mom lived.

Dad had two kids from a previous marriage. My sister, Vanessa, is fifteen years older than me, and my older brother, Jermaine, was seventeen when I was born. My half-siblings lived in a different house with their mom. It wasn’t far from us, about five miles north in Lynwood, but I never had much of a relationship with either of them until we were all older. It was hard to find common ground when I was a kid. They just grew up so differently—their lives seemed calm. Besides, the age difference between my half-siblings and me was massive: By the time I could walk they were already out of high school.

Mom and Dad met at the Compton Fashion Center, aka the Swap Meet, a Compton landmark that has since been shuttered, like so many hangouts from my days. The Swap Meet was a massive indoor flea market where you could go to find all manner of knock-off clothes, counterfeit sneakers, and fake diamonds and jewelry. It was where my friends and I would pick up a pair of fake Air Jordans and catch the latest fashion trends, the whole time dreaming that one day we would be able to own the real deal. My mom used to always tell the same story of how they met. She was shopping in a shoe store when my dad spotted her through a throng of people from outside. He approached her, working up the courage to ask for her phone number.

“Boy, you’re going to have to buy me these shoes if you even want to think about getting my number,” she told him. Mom wasn’t kidding. So, he bought the shoes. The two were practically inseparable from that moment on.

Mom’s family accepted my dad with open arms. He wasn’t loud and didn’t need to be front and center, but he was a guy who naturally commanded respect. Mom’s dad, my grandfather, Otis Dykes, coached youth football in the community and began coaching alongside my dad in the local Pop Warner league. Mom never let me play football, even though it was one of the most popular sports in Compton. Practically every kid in the neighborhood grew up playing football. (Dad and Grandpa coached the rapper Eazy-E when he was a kid, which always blew my mind.) Once, my mom and dad went to see my brother Jermaine play in a high school game. In the fourth quarter, he was knocked out cold by a vicious tackle. That was all Mom had to see to know her own son was never going to meet the same fate. She wouldn’t let me near the gridiron. Instead, my first sport …