No sooner did Michael Beasley post a new backplate snapshot to his Twitter account — with what appeared to be a bag of weed nearby — than the 2nd year Heat forward’s Twitter account under the nom de plume “GorilliaBeas” disappeared. The South Florida Sun Sentinel‘s Ira Winderman reports Beasley has since checked into a Houston rehabilitation center run by John Lucas.
“He’s compliant out in Houston, just trying to do everything that is asked of him at this particular moment,”Beasley’s personal manager Bruce Shingler said. “He’s OK right now.”
Inspection of the photo showed two baggies in the background, which some have assumed to be marijuana.
“I don’t know who took that picture. Obviously, it wasn’t Mike taking it,” Shingler said. “I really have no clue about that.”
Before Beasley’s Twitter account was closed and erased, these three posts were offered:
— “Y do I feel like the whole world is against me!!!!!!! Back on my FTW!!!!! I can’t win for losin!!!!!!!!!!”
— “Feelin like it’s not worth livin!!!!!!! I’m done”
— “not feelin this at all!!!!!”
“I truly think they were taken out of context,” Shingler said of those posts. “One thing about the Twitter thing, it can mislead and be misread at times.”
On the topic of being mislead and misread, I apparently owe Stephen A. Smith a big apology. It would seem South Beach IS addictive.
I was about to start working on a post about this. I’ve been putting together the front-end pieces for an article about the apparent uptick in incidence of depression in professional athletes this season, but it’s getting really hard to keep up. I am really, really glad 1) that Twitter didn’t exist when I was 20 and 2) that I’ve never been good enough at anything for people to have paid that much attention to me. Because this is sad.
David Wright has more HR’s in 2009 than the number of big leaguers to hit the DL on what-sounds-like-depression this season. Just barely. Apologies to Jayson Stark.