Lindsay Lohan, Britney Spears and Nicole Richie could easily follow in Eddie Griffin’s footsteps. The trouble is, the former NBA player is dead. Enablers were all over.
NBA Player Eddie Griffin was Enabled to Death. Will Starlets Lindsay Lohan, Britney Spears and Nicole Richie be Next
NBA forward Eddie Griffin, the seventh overall pick in the 2001 draft, was killed instantly in a fiery collision with a freight train August 17 at age 25. There was no sign of skid marks and his body was burned so badly dental records were required to confirm his identity. While friends and peers alike agreed that a sober Griffin “had the innocence of a child” and “would give you the shirt off his back,” all hell could break out when alcohol coursed through his veins–which it often did.
Two public incidents were notable. He was indicted on charges of felony assault stemming from an incident in October, 2003, in which he hit his girlfriend in the face and shot at her as she drove away from his home. As a result of this arrest, Griffin went into rehab. His alcoholism was already so obvious that a clause in his contract with the Minnesota Timberwolves required abstinence.
Unfortunately, the agreement lacked teeth–which would include regular monitoring to insure that he kept to the terms of his contract. As a result, he was involved in a 2006 incident many consider to be the most embarrassing ever involving an NBA player. Griffin was masturbating and watching pornography when he drove his Cadillac Escalade into a parked Chevy Suburban at 2:20 a.m., a few hours after participating in a regular season NBA game. He convinced an unnamed witness to cancel a 911 call and promised to purchase the owner of the Suburban, who had been walking toward his vehicle at the time of the incident, “a car, any car–well not a Bentley,” if he wouldn’t call the cops.
There were numerous light-weight or non-existent consequences throughout Griffin’s alcoholism career. He spent 11 days in jail and was sentenced to 18 months of probation, a $2,000 fine and anger-management classes as a result of the 2003 assault. There is no mention of being required to test clean and sober as a condition of probation.
A lawsuit brought by the owner of the Suburban, Jamal Goulart Hassuneh, alleged that numerous Timberwolves top employees knew that Griffin was drinking regularly. Despite the clause in his contract, Griffin “repeatedly” consumed alcohol and became “intoxicated” at a bar “across the street from the Target Center in downtown Minneapolis where the Minnesota Timberwolves play their home games and where the administrative offices are located.” The lawsuit further alleged that Coach Dwane Casey, Vice-President of Basketball Operations Kevin McHale and unnamed others in the administrative arm “knew or should have known of” Griffin’s relapse.
Officers called to scene of the 2:20 a.m. incident were told by the dispatcher that the suspect was under the influence of alcohol. Numerous witnesses at the scene, in front of and inside an all-night grocery store, “observed Defendant Griffin’s obvious intoxication and had advised the Defendant officers of their observations, and…heard and observed Defendant Griffin say in the store” that he was drunk. Most of this was caught on the store’s audio-video device. Yet the officers, Matthew Lindquist and Daniel S. Anderson, who were named in the lawsuit, “conducted no field sobriety tests or otherwise competently assessed the issue of whether Defendant Griffin may have been under the influence of alcohol.” After being heard on the tape saying they were not going to arrest him, they committed the ultimate act of enabling by a cop–they drove him to his home in St. Paul.
The enabling, or attempts thereof, continued after the incident when a former Minneapolis police officer now employed by the Timberwolves, Bob Goedderz, allegedly attempted to illegally remove Griffin’s Escalade from an impound lot. This could have prevented the plaintiffs in the lawsuit from securing the in-dash DVD player, which would serve to contradict Griffin’s claim that he crashed when he reached down for his cell phone (the player was locked in “play” mode after the crash).
The troubling aspect to the Griffin story is that his life was filled with enablers. Apparently, no one was willing to impose enough pain for him to cry “enough.” While the toxicology report is not yet in, we can safely ascribe a high likelihood that he was under the influence when he slammed into the freight train, which his enablers will have to live with for the rest of their lives.
The end for any of the trio of young starlets could be just as tragic. Nicole Richie incredibly served just 82 minutes for a DUI in which she was heading the wrong way while on her cell phone (typical) on the 134 freeway in Burbank, California. Lindsay Lohan served a one-day sentence stemming from a DUI incident in which she was driving at speeds up to 100 mph on Pacific Coast Highway and 80 mph on residential surface streets in Santa Monica. Although required to complete a drug treatment program and placed on 36 months probation, there is no report that she will be tested regularly and randomly for alcohol and legal psychotropic drugs. While Britney Spears hasn’t had any run-ins with the law lately, she has often been reported to be under the influence since she gained primary custody of her two toddlers–and was probably high as a kite for the world to see as her performance at the recent MTV Video Music Awards bombed.
These are far from being the first incidents for which close people or the law could intervene and coerce abstinence in any of these young women. Richie, singer Lionel Richie’s adopted daughter, was arrested for DUI in 2001 and for being involved in a nightclub brawl in 2002. In 2003 she was charged with driving without a valid license and heroin possession. Lohan, who is too good an actress for her own good and is thereby enabled by filmmakers, has been repeatedly excused for awful behaviors by those closest to her, including her mother Dina Lohan and her publicist Leslie Sloane-Zelnik, who until recently always denied anything was wrong with Lindsay. Even after a stint in rehab, celebrity “mental health therapist” Terence McPhaul was quoted in USA Today saying Spears may not be struggling with alcoholism but that instead “there are steps in her development she has skipped over.” Yes, she skipped them alright–because she has the disease of alcoholism, she is emotionally stuck at the age she triggered her alcoholism–average age 13.
What can be done? All have been in rehab, which has so far failed utterly. The problem with rehab is that it focuses on the wrong person. Too many addicts are left with enablers to bail them out of any trouble post-relapse. And money buys enablers. Addicts, especially wealthy ones who have proven to society they cannot safely use, need coerced abstinence. This should include ankle bracelets, random and regular testing for all psychotropic drugs and a promise of real jail time with any relapse. Society does the starlets and their potential victims no favors through its failure to coerce abstinence. These three have so far been lucky–they have not yet experienced the ultimate tragedy. Because those closest are often the most vociferous and stalwart enablers, it’s time for society to act–before it’s too late–as it was for Marilyn Monroe, Elvis Presley, John Belushi, Jimi Hendrix, Jim Morrison, Ana Nicole Smith and now, Eddie Griffin.