Ryan Anderson discusses girlfriend's suicide, 'the most painful experience of my life'
Most of the attention paid to the New Orleans Pelicans thus far has very understandably focused on Anthony Davis' continuing emergence as an all-court superstar who might already be the NBA's third-best player. But beyond the Brow, there's been another heartening and remarkable story brewing in the Bayou through the season's opening weeks — the return of sharpshooting big man Ryan Anderson, who suffered a scary neck injury that prematurely ended what had been a career-best 2013-14 campaign, and who has bounced back to resume torching opposing defenses off the Pelicans' bench this season.
But while the 26-year-old Anderson's early season form — 16.3 points and 5.9 rebounds in just 26.3 minutes per game, shooting a blistering and career-best 42.9 percent from 3-point land — has offered an encouraging indication that he's fully recovered from the injuries that limited him to just 20 games last season, it's worth remembering the physical pain he felt paled in comparison to the emotional anguish with which he battled all season long.
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Anderson's girlfriend, model and reality television star Gia Allemand, committed suicide last August. She was 29. While Anderson rejoined the Pelicans for training camp a mere seven weeks later, and did his level best to articulate what he was going through before the season, an event so traumatic can take years to properly process, and putting those feelings into words ... well, it's the kind of thing that's not likely to happen on Media Day.
Anderson decided to share his story — his last interactions with Allemand, who suffered from premenstrual dysphoric disorder, an affliction that reportedly "leads to extreme mood shifts and heightened symptoms of depression before menstruation"; the harrowing experience of finding her in her apartment, and the turmoil that followed; all the anger, sadness, shame, guilt and everything else that's raged and receded in waves within him over the past 15 months — during an in-depth, hours-long, multi-day interview with Sports Illustrated's Chris Ballard. The result is a sad, important and ultimately surprisingly hopeful story, one of the more gut-wrenching and gripping, and more carefully crafted and elegantly executed pieces of sports journalism you're likely to read this year.
This excerpt from Ballard's story — which, again, is well worth reading in full — highlights the role Pelicans head coach Monty Williams played in trying to help keep Anderson's world together:
The first thing Ryan saw upon entering Gia’s fourth-floor apartment were her knees. His recollections of what followed are fragmentary. His screaming and running to her. The vacuum-cleaner cord hanging from the second-floor handrail of the spiral staircase, so tight around her neck that at first he couldn’t loosen it. Gia’s dog, Bentley, running to him. A neighbor arriving and dialing 911 as Ryan tried to revive Gia. Seeing the three-word note in her handwriting on the dining room table: Mom gets everything. Paramedics rushing in. Ryan calling Donna [Micheletti, Allemand's mother]. Donna cursing at him, screaming that he knew Gia was sensitive, that he was supposed to protect her. The police pushing through the door. Ryan answering questions, sobbing, blaming himself. Pelicans coach Monty Williams hurrying in with a team security guard and finding Ryan slumped on the carpet, his back to the door, unable to rise. Williams dropping to his knees and hugging his player, the two men rocking back and forth.
For Williams, the night was a test of sorts. A fourth-year coach, Williams had played at Notre Dame and then for five NBA teams. He and Anderson were unusually close. Both men were Christians, and they bonded immediately despite the vast differences in their backgrounds. Williams grew up in poverty, was sexually abused as a boy and once, at Notre Dame, considered suicide. That didn’t make it any easier to relate to Anderson now, however. Everyone’s pain is different.
As a crowd milled outside the apartment complex, Williams and the security guard hoisted up Ryan, who was limp and drenched with tears and sweat, too hysterical even to walk. They dragged Ryan to the elevator and then into a waiting car, the tops of his feet, still wedged into flip-flops, scraping the asphalt so hard that his toes still bear thick white calluses more than a year later.
As they drove in silence, Williams kept thinking that it was fine if he blew a game, but he couldn’t mess up now. Once home, he huddled with his wife, Ingrid, and Ryan in the family room, praying. Ingrid’s brother had committed suicide recently. She knew not to say it was going to be O.K., because it wasn’t. “This is going to be hard for a long time,” she told Ryan.
That night, as the family pastor came and went, Ryan cried so much that it felt as if he were dry heaving or bleeding internally. Each convulsion ripped his insides apart.
Around 1 a.m., at Ingrid’s urging, Monty brought one of his sons’ mattresses down to the living room. There the two men lay through the night, Ryan curled on the sofa and his coach on the floor next to him. When Ryan wanted to talk, they talked. Otherwise there was only his muted sobbing. Finally, just after the sun came up, Ryan fell into a fitful sleep.
While the specific circumstances surrounding Anderson's call and Williams' response represent an uncommon interaction between player and coach — and, of course, thank God for that — they also represent a remarkable relationship, as well. As Ballard noted on Thursday, it says an awful lot about Williams that he was the first person Anderson called in the most emotionally chaotic moment in his life.
It says even more that Williams responded by rushing to Anderson's side, by literally pulling him off the floor, by bringing him into his home and refusing to leave him during his time of greatest need, and by eventually convincing Anderson to return to the Pelicans' locker room, where he could rest within a support structure geared toward helping him find some semblance of sanctuary.
“I learned a lot from Ryan going through all this stuff,” Williams told Ballard. “I was in awe of his ability to come back, to address the team, to play as well as he did, to be the teammate that he was and is.”
In the re-telling, though, we also learn a lot about Williams. Yes, there have been and will continue to be questions about Williams' in-game work on the New Orleans sideline, about his offensive scheme, his clock management and whether he's the right X's-and-O's tactician to maximize the Pelicans' prodigious talent. But coaching is about an awful lot more than using your timeouts wisely and drawing up the right sideline-out-of-bounds play. Reading this, you certainly get a better understanding of why Anderson or some of the other Pelicans' players would run through a brick wall for him.
Sharing his story might lighten Anderson's burden, but it doesn't remove it entirely. As he's learned over the course of the past year, the complicated combination of emotions and grief will persist; his task, as arduous as it is necessary, is to find a way forward, and to hopefully help some of those who struggle in silence as he continues his search. From Ballard:
“I’ve been given a platform in the NBA,” he says. “I know when I’m done playing, people aren’t going to really care about me, the way I shot three-pointers. But during this time when I have a voice, I think it’s really important for me to talk about it.” He continues. "People need to put a face to [suicide prevention and survival], and I’m O.K. being that face.” He pauses. “I’m not overjoyed that I have to talk about the most painful experience of my life, but either I become that face or I tuck [myself] away in a corner and I let this rule over me.”
It's a battle that Anderson might never finish fighting, but it seems to be one he's making peace with, as he places his focus on fighting for others:
Really blessed to have @SI_ChrisBallard write such a beautiful spread about such a tough subject on the latest @SInow magazine. My prayer
— Ryan Anderson (@ryananderson33) November 13, 2014
is that this article helps bring to light a topic that is so hidden in the dark. People need to know, they aren't alone with their struggles
— Ryan Anderson (@ryananderson33) November 13, 2014
own decisions. If we didn't have free will, we would be robots, controlled in every way. God has been there with me and she is now with Him.
— Ryan Anderson (@ryananderson33) November 13, 2014
Anderson's Pelicans next take the court on Friday night, against the Minnesota Timberwolves. We'll be watching, and rooting.
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Dan Devine is an editor for Ball Don't Lie on Yahoo Sports. Have a tip? Email him at devine@yahoo-inc.com or follow him on Twitter!
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