THE WORST part wasn't the the 6 a.m. wakeup calls or the early morning flights with a hangover. It was the lying. The things an alcoholic does to deceive his family, his co-workers, his friends. The things he does to deceive himself.
Jazz forward David Benoit told himself he wasn't addicted. Those were guys who get high snorting cocaine at parties. He was "just having fun" with a few drinks.But alcohol abuse caught up with Benoit. He tried to quit during the regular season, but that lasted only four days. After a weekend of drinking he would be wanting to get a few beers with friends on Monday. "They'd say, `Hey, Babe, it's only Monday. We had a good time on the weekend. You're kind of drinking a lot,' " says Benoit.
So he'd lie to his friends, lie to himself. He'd suggest they go to sports bars, where everyone was talking and watching television and not paying attention. He'd have the waiters remove the glasses, so if someone came by, as far as they knew he was on his first beer.
He'd drink after the games to cool down, drink on the plane to relax. It wasn't excessive. It was just having a good time. Nobody was watching, nobody would know. "You become cunning," he says.
Benoit's relationship with alcohol began in college when he took his first drink. The guys said he needed it to party properly. "Having fun," he says. "If that's what you want to call it. I guess it was at the time."
Now Benoit says he was predisposed to the problem from the day he was born. His father had a history of drinking, and from the first time Benoit indulged, he was caught.
He told himself it was OK, he wasn't doing drugs. This was just drinking for fun. But by the time he was in his third NBA season, it was more than fun. It was a disease. He'd drink into the night after games and wake up the next morning feeling dead. "Those were monsters," he says.
He'd collapse into a heavy sleep on the planes until reaching the destination, then drag himself awake and sleep again on the team bus to the hotel. "It's so sneaky, the way it gets you," he continues. "You think you're all right when you're really not. It changes your thinking. It changes your personality some."
Covering up became more difficult. Players or fans would approach him the morning after a game with a compliment. "They'd say, `Great play, Dave' and I couldn't always remember it. I'd say, `Yeah, I make a lot of good plays.' They'd start talking about the play and all I could say is `Oh yeah, now I remember.' "
As Benoit's addiction grew, his game languished. An immensely talented athlete, he found that he could only sometimes summon the familiar skills. In a game that demands total concentration, he was only too often thinking about drinking. He may not get that important rebound, but he could always get a drink.
"I'd tell my body to do things and it wouldn't. It was like a man who loses his legs," he says. Nevertheless, he rationalized that it was just one game. There was always another game.
In his third season - the year Jazz coach Jerry Sloan says he can usually tell a player's potential - Benoit shot a miserable 38 percent. The moments of brilliance would be followed by periods of uncertainty. Sloan tried everything he knew to transform Benoit's occasional splendor into consistency. Benoit's name began surfacing in trade rumors.
Finally, Benoit checked into a Salt Lake alcohol rehabilitation center this summer. He wasn't convinced he had a problem, but he decided to check it out to pacify friends and family. There he admitted he was an alcoholic.
"I almost didn't believe how good it felt to admit it," he says.
With training camp beginning this week, Benoit believes he will become consistent now that he has dealt with his problem; that the flashes of brilliance will become games, and perhaps seasons of brilliance. "I'm not going to have a decent year, I'm going to have a great year," he says.
Perhaps. Whatever happens, he knows one thing: The greatest battle of his life will never be on the basketball court.