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Los Angeles Clippers guard John Wall bares his soul in the latest feature for The Players’ Tribune. Last month, the 5x NBA All-Star spoke with Chase Hughes of NBC Sports Washington about wanting to take his life at one point. This time, Wall puts the pen to paper himself and elaborates on those moments “so dark that suicide felt like the only option.”

“In the span of three years, I went from being on top of the world to losing damn near everything I ever cared about,” he writes. “In 2017, I’m jumping up on the announcer’s table in D.C. after forcing Game 7 against Boston, and I’m the king of the city. I’m getting a max extension, thinking I’m a Wizard for life. A year later, I tore my Achilles and lost the only sanctuary I’ve ever known—the game of basketball. I ended up with such a bad infection from the surgeries that I nearly had to have my foot amputated. A year later, I lost my best friend in the whole world, my mom, to breast cancer.”

Wall was one of the league’s most electric talents when he joined the league more than a decade ago. But a series of injuries left impacted his athleticism and a career that underdelivered in Washington D.C. He was eventually sent to the Houston Rockets for Russell Westbrook two years ago. It wasn’t the long list of physical setbacks, the trade, or still unfulfilled promise that tore Wall up inside. “The thing that hurt me the most was just randomly picking up my phone to call her,” he shares, “and realizing that there was nobody on the other end.”

Frances Pulley, Wall’s mom, died of breast cancer on December 13, 2019. And his grandmother passed away soon thereafter. “My whole life, I used to call her six or seven times a day, every day,” he says. “So when she died, I kept calling her number six or seven times a day just to hear the voicemail. I’d be talking to her, even though she was gone. That was when I started going to a really dark place.”

“My best friend is gone,” he continues. “I can’t play the game I love. Everybody just got their hand out. Nobody is checking on me for me. It’s always coming with something attached. Who’s there to hold me down now? What’s the point of being here?… Money and fame don’t mean sh*t if you don’t have peace in your life.”

Read John Wall’s own story of how close he came to the edge — and the six words that brought him back — in the piece, “I’m Still Here.”

John Wall Talks Almost Getting His Foot Amputated & Suicidal Thoughts After His Mother Died  was originally published on cassiuslife.com