by Kenray Sunyaru
This post is my personal response 'bigger view' to the recent unfortunate and way-way too early death of ‘Tony Tolbert’ a Detroit high-school basketball legend.
I knew Tony through a family I’m close with; he has children by one of their nieces. I would often see Tony at family events and holiday get togethers. I overheard talk that Tony was a really good basketball player back in the day, I learned about just how good he was after his death.
Looking back maybe I should have initiated a basketball conversation when I was around him; I myself played high-school basketball in Detroit, played in college, and coached too. There’s a 14-year age difference between us; I’m a Detroit high-school product of the middle 70’s and he the 1990’s.
By the time I met Tony I was mentally distant from basketball, I had experienced and seen the ‘downside’ of basketball for decades - the ‘addictive side’ of basketball; the psycho-emotional devastating side of basketball and its negative affects on way too many Black males when the ‘game ends’, when their NBA hoop dreams are over!
Indeed, for the overwhelming majority of Black males their hoop dream is over in high-school, others are over in college, only a very few make it to the NBA and their careers are short; the average NBA career is over in 4.5 years. Black males’ basketball hoop dreams for the most part are over from the beginning; there are 546,400 male high school basketball players of all races in the U.S. only 18,700 will play in college, and only .03% have a chance of a pro career: only 60 will be drafted to play in the NBA after college.
According to a 2020 NCAA study it found that 1.2% of players made the 60 NBA draft spots. The research found that 4,181 of the 18,816 players from the 2018-19 season were eligible for the 2019 NBA draft; 52 of the 60 slots went to NCAA players, with seven international talents and one prep school player taking the other remaining spots.
For Black males the odds of making it to the NBA is going to continually be ‘extremely thin’ due to the rise of international players grabbing more draft slots.
Post Traumatic Basketball Stress Disorder (PTBSD)
After Tony Tolbert’s death, I heard many of his friends, ex-team mates from high-school/college, and ex-NBA players say that Tony was one of the greatest high-school basketball players from Detroit who did not make it to the pros ‘NBA’. Tony like way too many of us Black males were ‘hooked on basketball’ at an early age ‘one-dimensional programing’ of making it to the pros.
By the time Black males finish their high-school and college basketball careers ‘don’t make it to the NBA’ way too many of us suffer both from stunted growth of ‘basketball over-identification’ and psycho-emotionally from what I see as ‘Post Traumatic Basketball Stress Disorder’ (PTBSD) a psychiatric disorder that can occur in Black males who have experienced the ongoing emotional devastation of not making it to the pros or who had short NBA careers; some of the symptoms of PTBSD are:
*Recurrent, unwanted distressing memories of not making it to the NBA
*Upsetting thoughts ‘being irritated’ angry of not making it to the NBA
*Constantly having ‘flashbacks’ living in the past of your glory days of being a basketball star and how you should have made it to the NBA
*Inability to relate to family, relative, friends, and co-workers ‘hard to get along with’; difficulty in maintaining employment; blaming oneself and others for not making it to the NBA
*Avoiding people, places, and things that remind you about how good you were in basketball; this avoidance is a defense mechanism that lessens you from remembering and thinking about your failure to make it to the NBA
Another key symptom of PTBSD is major conduct disorder ‘crime and substance abuse’. Dr. Harry Edwards has studied the impact of failure in sports and how it has affected the mental health of Black men; Edwards stated there are a number of syndromes he’s identified:
“Our prisons, for example are loaded with Black males with tremendous athletic potential. When they found out they could not make it, their energies were directed toward anti-social behaviors – crime and drugs. We have all kinds of cases of depression and nervous breakdowns. We also believe there is some relationship between failure in sports and the increasing suicide rate among Black men. Many Black males whose college basketball eligibility is over, still live in a basketball fantasy world spending all of their time playing in gyms and on playgrounds; some of these men become ‘basketball bums’.”
Self-Isolation and withdrawing is another negative effect of PTBSD, it is my perspective that too many Black men ex-basketball players around age 40 withdraw and start excessively watching basketball and other sports on television because it reminds them of 'being back in the day' when they had athletic prowess ‘I was the shit’.
Most of the time when Black men are watching all this sports on television they are eating unhealthy junk-food and fast-food; many smoke cigarettes and drink liquor too. Sitting for long periods of time lacking physical activity, along with poor diets results in many Black men becoming ‘obese’ physically sick with hypertension, heart disease, strokes, and diabetes.
Sitting down for long periods stops the body from using its muscles and adequately processing sugars and fats. According to a recent studies people who spend more than four hours in front of the television each day have a far higher risk of dying early than those who limit their viewing.
Watching sports on television for prolonged periods is definitely bad for Black men’s hearts according to research published in the Journal of the American Heart Association. People who watch more than four hours per day have a 46 percent higher risk of death from all causes. They also have an 80 percent increased risk from cardiovascular disease.
Moreover many Black men sit and watch television to distract themselves to avoid dealing with psychological male midlife crisis issues; many Black men watch sports on television to escape being depressed ‘regrets, failures’ and recreating themselves.
Post-Traumatic Basketball Stress Disorder (PTBSD) of ex-Black male basketball players is unknown to them however it’s widespread in our communities; ex-Black male basketball players are suffering in silence and it’s emotionally devastating and is disruptive to relationships.
As a community we must address PTBSD by creating counseling and self-help programs to address Black males PTBSD so they can become more aware, active, healthy, and functional.
In closing, let it be known to all who may read this post, in no way I’m indicating or implying that Tony Tolbert ‘specifically’ suffered from Post-Traumatic Basketball Stress Disorder (PTBSD) however in ‘general’ many ex-Black male basketball players do. I wrote this post as an educational piece for the Black community to consider and take action on.
