Darius Miles talking about his life on the early-2000s Clippers is simply incredible

Darius Miles opened up to the Player’s Tribune on what it was like to be an 18-year-old in the NBA, and his own personal struggles in an incredibly candid, and often funny look at himself titled “What the hell happened to Darius Miles?”

There’s a lot to unpack as the story meanders through him living the high life in LA to the issues his fame caused back home as a kid from East St. Louis. You should absolutely read the entire piece on the Player’s Tribune, for Miles’ amazing storytelling and also the constant interjections from his editor, friend and former teammate Quentin Richardson. This is the stuff we’re left amazed by.

The core of the early-2000s Clippers had a unified celebration that was never fully explained during Miles’ playing career. After a dunk or a big play the Clippers would tap themselves on the head with their fists in a gesture some believed was a gang sign, others believing it might have been a nod to extraterrestrial life — the reality is far more mundane.

The fist tap was a nod to Westchester High School, in particular Trevor Ariza, Hassan Adams, and Bobby Brown — who played for the team. Miles and Richardson were too young to go to clubs with their teammates, so they watched the up-and-coming players in high school. The trio from Westchester used the celebration after a three, and after becoming close to the Clippers players they wanted a shout out.

“So we’d be hanging with them, and they’d be like, “Come on, when you gonna shout us out? You gotta do it. Show us some love.”

So cut to me dunking the shit out of the ball, or Q hitting a big three-pointer or something, I can’t even remember, and one of us throws it up. Two taps to the head. For them boys from Westchester High.”

One of his first memories of experiencing the NBA lifestyle was after he received an invite to “Zo’s Summer Groove,” a legendary week-long offseason party held by Alonzo Mourning in Miami in the early-2000s. All the top players went, NBA legends like Allen Iverson and Gary Payton — as well as actors and musicians, it was a huge deal.

But Miles never got to party. Instead shortly after the first day he learned he was suffering from chicken pox, and was holed up for much of the week in a hotel, taking oatmeal baths and putting ice packs on his head.

“Man, Q is running around South Beach with these boys and I’m sitting in the tub taking oatmeal baths and shit. And the worst part was that he’d come back to check on me and I’d be laid up in bed with a big-ass ice pack on my forehead, and he’d come running in the room like a little kid — like he was having the time of his life.”

Mourning made him an amazing offer when Miles was finally feeling better — he should go out on a wave runner. It didn’t go well.

“I hit the edge of that boat with the Jet Ski and I flipped ― I’m talking flipped that bitch. And now I’m upside down, flying through the air. And I can just see the newspapers flashing in my mind, like, NBA ROOKIE DIES IN DAMN JET SKI ACCIDENT IN SOUTH BEACH.

So I’m like, Nah, I did not survive 18 years of my life in East St. Louis to drown in Alonzo Mourning’s damn marina. We’re not going out like that.

So I do a little tuck-and-roll or whatever, and I hit the water. Ploosh. Go under. Now, you might not know this about me, but I can really swim. I’m like the black Michael Phelps. That’s no problem. But the thing about me is, I don’t do ocean water. Too murky, man. If I can’t see underneath me, I’m out.”

Thankfully he was OK, though Richardson remembers Miles screaming about the seaweed.

He doesn’t remember exactly why someone put a gun to his head when he was 11-years old, but Miles remembers everything about it. It was all just a case of being the biggest kid around.

“I was the youngest kid out there, but I was the biggest. So he came straight at me, thinking I was the leader. When you’re looking down the barrel of a gun, you got one thing that can save you, and it ain’t reasoning with the man. It’s power.”

Miles believes he would have been killed that day if he hadn’t dropped his dad’s name, which was enough to get the man to back off and he wasn’t bothered again. Miles says that his father wasn’t really in his life, but he had enough of a reputation to ensure his son wouldn’t be touched.

“So I went at MJ hard ― and of course he’s MJ, so he got moves. He killed me. But I still went at him hard, and he started showing me respect. After the camp, I got a picture with him and everything, and I took it home and put it on the mantle like MJ was one of my uncles or something.

And I remember my momma said, “What’s MJ like?”

And I said, “Momma, it’s so crazy. Michael Jordan was out here cussin’. He talks just like us!”

Everyone knows Donald Sterling’s name, and what a notoriously horrible human he is — and his players got a glimpse of that too, even without knowing his story. While teams around the league practiced in multi-million dollar training facilities with every luxury, the Clippers were forced to travel to a JUCO in South Central to practice.

“This was a different time, man. This was the peak of the Sterling era. I mean, we used to literally practice at a damn JUCO. A junior college. In South Central.

Editor’s note: You couldn’t even shower. The showers were those old-school joints with the one big-ass pipe in the middle of the floor with the spouts sticking out every which way. Half of ’em broke. It was ridiculous.

We had players pulling up to a JUCO parking lot in Inglewood driving Aston Martins and Ferraris. Random dudes were coming out of class, walking across the cut, like “Yooooooooooooooooo!”

I mean, me and Q, we were used to it. It was nothing. We grew up in that environment.

But you know, we had Eric Piatkowski coming from South Dakota, and he was just like, “Yoooooooo, what the hell is going on? Get me outta here.”

Richardson interjects in an editor’s note to share a story that’s just ... creepy.

“Editor’s note: People ask us about Sterling all the time, looking for crazy stories. But honestly, he wasn’t really around like that. Every once in a while, he would pop into the locker room outta nowhere with all his old-ass friends wearing mink coats and shit. We’d be buck-naked, changing, and he’d say wild-ass stuff, like, “Look at these boys! Look at my beautiful boys!” And we’d just be shooting each other looks like, “Yo! Duh fuuuuuuuuck?”

Miles has lost a lot over the years: Money, fame, his job in the NBA — but it wasn’t until he lost his mom to cancer that things came crashing down. He was candid about how difficult life was, and the struggle to keep things together.

“I was stuck in my momma’s house in East St. Louis for like three years. I worked my whole life to get out of there, and I was back. Just … trapped. Carrying my gun with me everywhere. Couldn’t sleep. Couldn’t escape my own head. Couldn’t find any peace.”

Thankfully Miles pulled through. When he was at his lowest he called Richardson, who was now living in Florida and admitted that he needed help getting out of a dark place. He drove all night in a U-Haul to Florida, and now lives close to his friend — and most-importantly: He found peace.

“Now, I live down the street from Q in Florida. I like it down there. For the first time in years, I can sleep at night. I don’t have to carry a gun. I can finally get a little bit of peace. I’m just trying to get better, day by day. Trying to be a better person, day by day.

Me and Q, we don’t got the matching trucks no more. We’re not living that lifestyle. But you know what? You can say whatever you want about us, but you can’t take away a real simple fact.

It don’t matter who we run into ― MJ, Paul Pierce, Shawn Kemp, some random dude on the street …

They know. They know what we did.”