Former NBA center Willie Cauley-Stein, the No. 6 pick in the 2015 NBA Draft out of Kentucky, is hoping for a comeback, according to Kyle Tucker of The Athletic.
The 7-foot big man’s career was delayed by depression and drug addiction, as he concedes to Tucker.
“I could easily be dead,” Cauley-Stein said. “I asked for help before it was too late, and I got better, but the basketball thing has been a lot harder to get back.”
A consensus All-American and SEC Defensive Player of the Year while at Kentucky, Cauley-Stein transitioned from high-energy hyper-athlete to intriguing rim roller in the NBA. His first stop was several down-on-their-luck Sacramento Kings teams. Unfortunately for Sacramento, the team nabbed Cauley-Stein in the draft over future All-NBA Phoenix Suns shooting guard Devin Booker, future Indiana Pacers center Myles Turner, future Sixth Man of the Year Montrezl Harrell, and future title-winning reserve power forward/center Bobby Portis.
Cauley-Stein had a respectable start with the Kings, averaging 7.0 points on 56.3 percent shooting from the floor, 5.3 rebounds, and 1.0 blocks in 2015-16. During his final season with the squad, 2018-19, he played in 81 games, averaging 11.9 points and a career-best 8.4 rebounds, plus 2.4 dimes and a career-best 1.2 steals.
Jahlil Okafor #8 of the New Orleans Pelicans drives against Willie Cauley-Stein #00 of the Sacramento Kings during the second half at the Smoothie King Center on October 19, 2018 in New Orleans, Louisiana. Cauley-Stein is looking for his next NBA opportunity.
Jonathan Bachman/Getty Images
During those four years in Sacramento, “life was good,” Cauley-Stein noted. “It was all love.”
Though Cauley-Stein had expected to be retained on a massive, long-term contract, he instead joined the Golden State Warriors on a “prove-it” near-minimum deal for 2019-20.
When tragedy struck in his Sacramento home, it triggered the beginning of a major emotional decline. On Aug. 23, 2019, three of Cauley-Stein’s friends were shot in their sleep at his Sacramento abode. One perished from their wounds. Cauley-Stein was out of town with the Warriors.
“That kind of started a spiral of mental health,” Cauley-Stein reveald. “Trying to deal with that and hoop at the same time — for a new team, on a bad deal, and then my wife got pregnant — it was just too many weird things and big changes, and I got on the pain pills trying to just run away from reality.”
When his beloved grandmother, Norma Jean Stein, was struck with bone cancer, it further compounded Cauley-Stein’s depression, and he dove into prescription drug abuse.
“I was doing so many pills, I was asleep all the time,” Cauley-Stein explained, “or when I was awake, I wasn’t really there. I didn’t handle that the right way. I missed really getting to say goodbye to my grandmother. I could’ve been around her more, FaceTimed her more, done so many things just to be with her at the end, and I did the exact opposite. I was a coward, man. Every time I talked to her, she looked different, looked worse, and I didn’t want to see her like that.”
Six days after Norma Jean Stein’s Dec. 1, 2021 passing, Cauley-Stein went to rehab. Per Cauley-Stein, he had been abusing the pills just to keep his head above water and show up in team practices while with the Dallas Mavericks. He was cut in Jan. 2022. Without him, the Mavericks advanced to the Western Conference Finals.
“The team could tell I had no energy, no love, no personality, no nothing. The drugs took everything from me,” he said. “I think I’m playing hard, balling, doing my thing, and then I hear, ‘He doesn’t look like he loves basketball.’ It didn’t occur to me until I went and got sober and did the work that I realized: ‘Oh, this is what people saw.’ The spark that I have when I talk, I didn’t have that.”
Per Cauley-Stein, he had presumed he was using a bootleg version of Percocet to alleviate his feelings. Drug tests at his rehab facility revealed that he had in fact been purchasing faux Percocet that was laced with fentanyl, a drug so lethal that the U.S. Drug Enforcement Agency estimated that roughly 70 percent of its seized 80 million fentanyl-laced fake pills possessed a possible lethal dose.
“I didn’t like who I saw in the mirror, and I was going to have to keep on doing drugs to play,” Cauley-Stein conceded. “I told my agent, ‘I gotta get help.’ As soon as I called and put myself into the NBA drug program and told them everything, it was instant relief.”
Upon his return, the veteran big man inked a 10-day deal with the Philadelphia 76ers in Feb. 2022. The team opted not to bring him back to close out the season. In 2022-23, he suited up for 13 contests with the Houston Rockets’ G League affiliate squad, the Rio Grande Valley Vipers.
Last year, Cauley-Stein suited up for Italian squad Openjobmetis Varese, at one point pulling down a EuroCup-record 20 rebounds. While he’s hoping to return to the NBA or Europe, the 31-year-old is also looking to complete his degree at Kentucky. He has just 38 credit hours left.
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