Birdman's redemption bittersweet for his mother

Chris Andersen was going to buy his mother a house. They would build it right in the middle of the 10 acres she had in rural God-knows-where Texas. He said he would buy her a Lamborghini, too. She laughed at that. If he just helped her pay for her meds, that would be enough. This is what they dreamed about. A life where they didn't have to struggle. A life where she wouldn't have to push a janitor's broom or bartend at the bar one of her Harley buddies owned.

Linda Holubec was there that November night in 2001, when the Denver Nuggets called her son with the news that they were signing him to a deal that would end his vagabond lifestyle. They were sitting in a hotel lobby in Fayetteville, N.C., about to board a van bound for some minor league outpost. She would never have to lend him money for groceries or co-sign for another car again. They had made it.




For almost his entire life they had been inseparable. She held him for hours and wiped his tears the day his father walked out on them. She sat beside him as he got his first tattoo on his 18th birthday. She scraped together tip money to travel to the far side of the world to watch him play basketball in gyms so smoky her glasses would fog up.

Now they were bound for Denver, and she couldn't wait to hug Nuggets GM Kiki Vandeweghe. They didn't know much about pro basketball, but they knew they'd be rich. And they had done it together. An improbable journey from the backwoods of Texas, where kids are more likely to get hooked on meth than play AAU ball, had reached its end point.

But four years later, Linda's world collapsed.

One of Linda's friends saw the words that would change her life forever slowly crawl along the bottom of the television screen and called her right away.

"Something happened with Chris," the voice said over the phone. Andersen had been disqualified from the NBA on Jan. 25, 2006, for violating the league's anti-drug policy by testing positive for a banned substance. He didn't have the courage to call his mother and break the news. It was the spectacular finale to a downward spiral that began the moment Andersen scribbled his name on an official contract.

But the door to redemption swung wide open only two years later. On March 4, the NBA reinstated Andersen, and his former team, the New Orleans Hornets, signed him to a contract for the remainder of the season. Linda cried both tears of joy and pain. She was happy her boy had made it. Again. But there was something else that made the news of his reinstatement almost as hard to take as his expulsion: the fact that Linda Holubec and her son have not spoken in almost three years.

During his first four seasons in the NBA, Andersen was known for his wildly athletic dunks and reckless intensity. He hadn't developed any real moves to speak of, and even a 10-foot pull-up jumper was ill-advised for him. But what he lacked in skill he made up for with a floor burn-inducing style of play and an arsenal of eccentricities that won over fans leaguewide. The decibel level at home games soared when he checked his human-wrecking-ball act into the game.

Birdman's athleticism earned him invites to two slam-dunk contests.

Fans wore shaggy blonde wigs and imitated his signature Birdman hand gesture by interlocking their thumbs and flapping their fingers whenever Andersen threw down one of his high-flying yet lovably clumsy dunks. He never averaged more than seven points or six rebounds in a season, but seeing that toothy grin after he crashed into the stands trying to save a ball he had no shot at was worth the price of admission.

And Linda loved it just as much as anyone. But when the game was over and he disappeared into the tunnel, fans couldn't see what she could. That Andersen was unable to turn off who he was. That the circle of unscrupulous characters entering his world was bleeding him dry. That an NBA paycheck was like nitroglycerin in his pocket. She may have raised him to raise hell, but she also taught him to say when.

But Andersen had passed his breaking point. For the first time, his mother couldn't save him. And they would pay the price equally.

http://sports.espn.go.com/nba/news/story?page=Andersen-080511