$22 Million Not Enough To Make This Guy Say ‘No’

Try to imagine the pull of something so strong that you would turn your back and leave $22 million on the table. Roy Tarpley’s problem is that he couldn’t be satisfied with just imagining.

Like the rest of us, Tarpley has been limited to a single lifetime, but that didn’t stop the NBA on Wednesday from handing him a second lifetime ban. According to the league, Tarpley tested positive for alcohol for the third time last week, violating the terms of an aftercare program that got him back into the NBA after his first lifetime ban.

It must have been some kind of high: The ban also meant the six-year, $26 million contract the Dallas Mavericks gave him before the start of last season - with about $22 million still owed - is null and void.

“I’m fine, just a little bit shocked,” Tarpley said. “This is the stupidest thing I ever heard of.”

That wasn’t entirely true. What Tarpley said next was much more stupid.

Referring to the arrest of Donald Hodge, another Dallas player, on charges of marijuana possession during the weekend without apparent sanction, Tarpley said, “You tell me what’s going on here. Marijuana isn’t a big deal to anyone, but alcohol is?”

Funny that he wants to split hairs now. Cocaine caused Tarpley’s 1991 exit, but with him the specific substance was never that important. To paraphrase from a song that Stephen Stills wrote, it seemed if Tarpley didn’t have the substance he wanted, he just abused the one he was with.

“He’s gone,” said Dick Motta, was Tarpley’s coach for a trouble-free freshman season, but became his baby sitter after that. “They should have put a (circus) tent over our organization ever since he came back, because that’s exactly what it’s been like around here.

“I gave him the 25-cent lecture, the 50-cent lecture, the lecture from the heart… . He’s had chances and the best counselors … But he wouldn’t take any of it.

“It’s a sad case,” Motta said, “but he’s a product of his own behavior.”

That said, it’s also a case that should not have dragged on this long - and would not have, except for the forbearance and considerable assistance of the Mavericks and NBA front offices. As it turned out, he got too many chances.

Well-meaning as the club and the league might have been at times, Tarpley’s history made clear he wasn’t about to be scared straight.

They should have cut and run sooner. Because whatever wasted potential Tarpley represents as an individual, he could turn out to be an even more disastrous precedent. And the instant riches and even faster company an NBA star draws guarantee there will be others like Tarpley.

What Tarpley needed was a few less supporters. Dallas owner Donald Carter and general manager Norm Sonju clung to him too long. The club suspended him no less than seven times in his six seasons there, but kept taking him back. As soon as the league rescinded its first lifetime ban, the Mavericks signed Tarpley to that incredible contract, then let him miss training camp this season and work out independently for the first month.

According to newspaper reports, several doctors informed the team that the ailments and occasional lapses that limited Tarpley’s ability last season and kept him out of this one suggested alcohol abuse. But it wasn’t until Wednesday that anything definitive came out.

When Sonju called the boss, Carter’s reply was, “That’s it, the final chapter of the book. It’s over.”

Let’s hope so, even though Tarpley’s agent, George Andrews, is making noises to the contrary and blaming everyone but Tarpley for Tarpley’s trouble.

“It’s a setback, granted, but it’s not the end of things,” Andrews said. “There’s a good likelihood he’ll play in the league again.”

Technically speaking, that’s possible, if the players’ union, the league and the league’s aftercare program rescind Tarpley’s “lifetime” ban one more time. But should he appeal for reinstatement at some future date, the parties should do something they should have done in 1991, what Tarpley should have done before abusing substances of all kinds became a problem:

Just say no.