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With how his NBA career has turned out, it is a shame for something like this to happen to him, you can get through this STRO.:
[h1]New Jersey Nets' Stromile Swift still grieving over his mother's death[/h1][h3]by Dave D'Alessandro/The Star-Ledger[/h3]
[h3]Thursday February 26, 2009, 9:12 PM[/h3]
William Perlman/The Star-LedgerStromile Swift was "inconsolable'' when he found out his mother died on Jan. 27.
The team plane landed at Newark at 5 a.m. on Jan. 27, and in lockstep, each Nets player and coach turned on his phone to hear the overnight messages.
As groggy as they were, this is usually a happy exercise: They had been pummeled in Oklahoma City hours earlier, and a voice or text message from friend orfamily is often a welcome distraction.
But the message on Lawrence Frank's phone was one he had been dreading for months, and it was left to the Nets coach to inform Stromile Swift that hismother had died that morning in a Shreveport, La., hospital after a decade-long fight with kidney disease.
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"Lawrence told him, and Stro was just so inconsolable," recalled the player's agent, Andy Miller. "They cleared out the plane, and theycouldn't get him to leave -- just wouldn't leave. And it's not really surprising: You can call this guy whatever you want, but the year he'shad indicates what kind of person he is.
"That's why this is so profoundly sad. He's lost a big piece of himself, and his career -- his next contract, whatever -- I don't think itmatters to him right now."
It has been a month since Mary Swift's passing, and her son confirms that little has changed, because the grief still overwhelms him, even since hereturned to work on Feb. 16. His employer and teammates have been very kind, but he often hides from their well-meaning words of condolence, their pats on theshoulder, their forced attempts at cheering him up.
He has learned that grief is a private and consuming emotion, and once it chooses you as its vessel it doesn't share itself easily with others.
And the Nets -- their players, coaches and organization -- have unwittingly become a case study for how to reorient a player who has been overcome by a loss soprofound it has made a job which pays him $6.2 million in the final year of his contract almost irrelevant.
"We try to be that (surrogate family)," said Nets forward Trenton Hassell, Swift's best friend. "But I don't know if that works. Wecan only be with him for a certain number of hours a day, but he has to go home and be by himself again.
"We thought being back, playing basketball, would take his mind away from it. But he's still down, and he can't talk about it."
And it's a subject that has consumed him for three full months.
Mary Swift was made of iron. Indeed, her children knew that her kidney condition was probably terminal, but somehow she always seemedindestructible: When her eldest son was drafted by Vancouver in 2000, she was only 47 but was already on dialysis. Two years later, she beat breast cancer. In2004, she had a stroke -- and fully recovered. And that was followed by pacemaker implant.
Yet she had always been an indomitable woman, who raised three kids by herself in a crime-infested neighborhood of one of the most dangerous places in thecountry. In the Queensborough section of Shreveport, La., where Swift spent the first 10 years of his life, you had double a chance of being a victim ofviolence than you had in the rest of Louisiana. During the 1990s, the murder rate in that city was triple that of the U.S. average, and Queensborough was thatcity's worst area.
"Then we moved to Morningside, and that became just as bad," Swift recalled earlier this week. "She did what she could, worked 3-to-11 every dayin home health care. But she kept us safe ... grounded."
He built her a house with his first contract -- "out in the country, where she had 20-something acres," he said -- but nobody was around to driveher anywhere, so he also bought her a townhouse in the city to be closer to his older sister, Shalanda.
Swift returned home to be with his mother in December, and the Nets -- other than a few odd days -- wouldn't see him again for six weeks.
"Even the hard times growing up, this was the roughest," Swift said. "She couldn't do anything for herself, and seeing her in that muchpain, it's indescribable. And when I would leave her for a while to be with the team, it was even worse -- every time someone called, my heart woulddrop."
He was at her bedside a few days after Christmas, watching his team play on TV, when she said the last thing he wanted to hear.
"It's getting about time for you to get back out there," Mary told her son. "I'm ready to see you play again. I'll be all right.You have to get back to work."
As soon as Swift returned to his team, his mother was in the hospital again -- her kidneys failing, dialysis no longer an option, with no suitabletransplant donor available. When she died, he wasn't there to hold her hand, and he has yet to forgive himself.
She was laid to rest on Jan. 29. Two or three days later, Swift said, Miller encouraged him to return to his team. The organization begancalling more regularly, and arranged for grief counseling. Swift, who couldn't get through the calls without sobbing uncontrollably, declined theiroffer.
"There was no road map of how to deal with this," general manager Kiki Vandeweghe said. "Everyone reacts differently to (grief), and it takeseveryone a long time to recover. But there was no easy answer here, and even though he was away for almost six weeks, the fact that Stro is such a sweet guyonly made it harder to know what to do."
As Frank put it, "Stro is a very easy guy to care about."
"There was some pressure," Swift said. "But I understand where they were coming from. I told my agent, 'My head's not there rightnow. I'd be no good to the team.'"
He returned to the Nets 17 days after his mom's funeral. But it will take him longer to feel like he's part of the team again, since he isn'tclose to being in the physical or mental state to play a game that requires a great deal of concentration.
Indeed, Swift, 29, may not play at all this year, which isn't an ideal circumstance for a free agent.
"We met Monday, and not once did he say to me, 'What's this do my career?'" Miller said. "Couple an underachieving situation withprioritizing family above everything else, and we're looking at a reclamation project. But I don't think it matters to Stro."
"I know the team needed me," Swift said. "And I'm pushing to get back in shape, because I'm not giving up on this season -- I want tohelp. But the contract is only in the back of my mind. I know how important this season was for me, but it couldn't be helped. I'll just have to startall over."
[h1]New Jersey Nets' Stromile Swift still grieving over his mother's death[/h1][h3]by Dave D'Alessandro/The Star-Ledger[/h3]
[h3]Thursday February 26, 2009, 9:12 PM[/h3]
The team plane landed at Newark at 5 a.m. on Jan. 27, and in lockstep, each Nets player and coach turned on his phone to hear the overnight messages.
As groggy as they were, this is usually a happy exercise: They had been pummeled in Oklahoma City hours earlier, and a voice or text message from friend orfamily is often a welcome distraction.
But the message on Lawrence Frank's phone was one he had been dreading for months, and it was left to the Nets coach to inform Stromile Swift that hismother had died that morning in a Shreveport, La., hospital after a decade-long fight with kidney disease.
http://
"Lawrence told him, and Stro was just so inconsolable," recalled the player's agent, Andy Miller. "They cleared out the plane, and theycouldn't get him to leave -- just wouldn't leave. And it's not really surprising: You can call this guy whatever you want, but the year he'shad indicates what kind of person he is.
"That's why this is so profoundly sad. He's lost a big piece of himself, and his career -- his next contract, whatever -- I don't think itmatters to him right now."
It has been a month since Mary Swift's passing, and her son confirms that little has changed, because the grief still overwhelms him, even since hereturned to work on Feb. 16. His employer and teammates have been very kind, but he often hides from their well-meaning words of condolence, their pats on theshoulder, their forced attempts at cheering him up.
He has learned that grief is a private and consuming emotion, and once it chooses you as its vessel it doesn't share itself easily with others.
And the Nets -- their players, coaches and organization -- have unwittingly become a case study for how to reorient a player who has been overcome by a loss soprofound it has made a job which pays him $6.2 million in the final year of his contract almost irrelevant.
"We try to be that (surrogate family)," said Nets forward Trenton Hassell, Swift's best friend. "But I don't know if that works. Wecan only be with him for a certain number of hours a day, but he has to go home and be by himself again.
"We thought being back, playing basketball, would take his mind away from it. But he's still down, and he can't talk about it."
And it's a subject that has consumed him for three full months.
Mary Swift was made of iron. Indeed, her children knew that her kidney condition was probably terminal, but somehow she always seemedindestructible: When her eldest son was drafted by Vancouver in 2000, she was only 47 but was already on dialysis. Two years later, she beat breast cancer. In2004, she had a stroke -- and fully recovered. And that was followed by pacemaker implant.
Yet she had always been an indomitable woman, who raised three kids by herself in a crime-infested neighborhood of one of the most dangerous places in thecountry. In the Queensborough section of Shreveport, La., where Swift spent the first 10 years of his life, you had double a chance of being a victim ofviolence than you had in the rest of Louisiana. During the 1990s, the murder rate in that city was triple that of the U.S. average, and Queensborough was thatcity's worst area.
"Then we moved to Morningside, and that became just as bad," Swift recalled earlier this week. "She did what she could, worked 3-to-11 every dayin home health care. But she kept us safe ... grounded."
He built her a house with his first contract -- "out in the country, where she had 20-something acres," he said -- but nobody was around to driveher anywhere, so he also bought her a townhouse in the city to be closer to his older sister, Shalanda.
Swift returned home to be with his mother in December, and the Nets -- other than a few odd days -- wouldn't see him again for six weeks.
"Even the hard times growing up, this was the roughest," Swift said. "She couldn't do anything for herself, and seeing her in that muchpain, it's indescribable. And when I would leave her for a while to be with the team, it was even worse -- every time someone called, my heart woulddrop."
He was at her bedside a few days after Christmas, watching his team play on TV, when she said the last thing he wanted to hear.
"It's getting about time for you to get back out there," Mary told her son. "I'm ready to see you play again. I'll be all right.You have to get back to work."
As soon as Swift returned to his team, his mother was in the hospital again -- her kidneys failing, dialysis no longer an option, with no suitabletransplant donor available. When she died, he wasn't there to hold her hand, and he has yet to forgive himself.
She was laid to rest on Jan. 29. Two or three days later, Swift said, Miller encouraged him to return to his team. The organization begancalling more regularly, and arranged for grief counseling. Swift, who couldn't get through the calls without sobbing uncontrollably, declined theiroffer.
"There was no road map of how to deal with this," general manager Kiki Vandeweghe said. "Everyone reacts differently to (grief), and it takeseveryone a long time to recover. But there was no easy answer here, and even though he was away for almost six weeks, the fact that Stro is such a sweet guyonly made it harder to know what to do."
As Frank put it, "Stro is a very easy guy to care about."
"There was some pressure," Swift said. "But I understand where they were coming from. I told my agent, 'My head's not there rightnow. I'd be no good to the team.'"
He returned to the Nets 17 days after his mom's funeral. But it will take him longer to feel like he's part of the team again, since he isn'tclose to being in the physical or mental state to play a game that requires a great deal of concentration.
Indeed, Swift, 29, may not play at all this year, which isn't an ideal circumstance for a free agent.
"We met Monday, and not once did he say to me, 'What's this do my career?'" Miller said. "Couple an underachieving situation withprioritizing family above everything else, and we're looking at a reclamation project. But I don't think it matters to Stro."
"I know the team needed me," Swift said. "And I'm pushing to get back in shape, because I'm not giving up on this season -- I want tohelp. But the contract is only in the back of my mind. I know how important this season was for me, but it couldn't be helped. I'll just have to startall over."
