Former NBA All Star Vin Baker is the epitome of the ESPN documentary 30 for 30 Broke. Baker who was once a star power forward in the league, squandered millions, became an alcoholic, and fell off the face of the earth.
Baker has surfaced, and according to the New York Daily News, trying to redeem himself through god and helping others. Baker is now essentially broke, he is a student at Union Theological Seminary in Manhattan, studying to get his Master’s degree in divinity with the hopes of becoming a pastor, and trying to change his life.
“It’s nothing short of a miracle,” he says of his comeback. “Physically, mentally, spiritually, it’s nothing short of a miracle.”
Bakers speaks of being highly religious, praying and then turning around and being the ultimate drunk and sinner.
“Let me break it down. It was phony,” Baker says to the small congregation. “It was kind of a double life. Everyone knew my father was a preacher. But when I left the arena I was jumping into my fast cars, hanging out in my mansion, doing all the wrong things.”
“Today I got a connection from Christ,” he goes on. “Sometimes you have to break away from all the other stuff to get a connection with Christ. The armor protection is not in the members around you because they’ll turn on you, Amen?”
Baker now speaks of the trappings that caused him to blow his money and dive into alcoholism.
“Too much time, too much money, not focused,” he says in his small office inside the Abyssinian Church. He’d always been a player who starved for attention, beginning at the University of Hartford, when he was the “small kid from the small town from the small college trying to be amongst the best,” he says.
What a sad story, yet I hope Baker makes it, and can help change a life.