There are certain NBA players who are remembered mostly (or exclusively) for the less-than-great things that happened to them on the court. Tyronn Lue got stepped over by Allen Iverson. Kent Benson broke his jaw by slamming it into Kareem Abdul Jabbar’s fist. Gerald Green got his head wedged between the rim and the backboard and had to be rescued by stadium personnel but only after dangling helplessly for several hours. Rudy Tomjanovich stained the hardwood with spinal fluid. Bryon Russell got pushed to the ground by Michael Jordan as His Airness hit the game/series/championship-winner. Which leads us to our hero, Craig Ehlo, who, in a similar fashion to Bryon, got himself addicted to painkillers and, after an altercation with his wife, was found on the ground outside his house next to a burning pile of his clothes.
It’s sad, really. Here is a man who did so much on the basketball court, and all Ehlo is remembered for is one little kerfuffle where he got messed up on opiates, got into a domestic dispute, and had to be held down while the cops showed up. Come on people. We can’t let a trivial thing like this overwrite the story of his career.
It is not your fault if your view of Ehlo is slanted. The NBA wants to pump up its own product by showing romanticized clips of the incident with slow-mo replays and dramatic music, clips highlighting the exact moment he collapses to the ground. It has gone so far as to become a routine chapter of NBA lore. The NBA, an organization priding itself on its integrity, is wholly responsible for this disgusting character assassination of one of its former players.
No longer! Watch these highlights and retake your interpretation of Ehlo’s career from the vile grasp of the NBA. Watch him score 27, his fourth-highest career point total, and form a new opinion of him. An opinion untainted by the media narrative, an opinion based on fact, an opinion that is mainly “he can shoot some jumpers, that’s pretty cool”.