Ex-Warriors player dead at 45 after being put on life support
Clifford Rozier, the top pick in 1994 by the Golden State Warriors and 16th overall, died of a heart attack Friday morning in Florida, the Bradenton Herald reported. He was 45.
Rozier went into cardiac arrest Wednesday and was put on life support; that life support was terminated Friday.
“When they went in to put stents in to work on his heart, he didn’t have heart damage,” Kobie Rozier, Clifford’s brother, told the Herald. “He didn’t have any major heart damage, but all his organs shut down. It could have gone either way. It could have gone into cardiac arrest to cause the organs to shut down or the organs could have shut down and caused the blood to not flow in the heart to go into cardiac arrest.”
Rozier was a first-team All-American in his senior year at Louisville, but the 6-foot-11 center’s NBA career was relatively undistinguished. He averaged 4.8 points and 5.2 rebounds in 173 career games between 1995 and 1998.
https://www.facebook.com/kobie.rozier/posts/2032495846770122
Rozier’s post-NBA career was not all sunshine and rainbows; like many athletes of his era, he squandered his millions. Even though he earned $3.56 million playing basketball, Rozier was living in a halfway house in Bradenton in 2010.
However, he told the Sarasota Herald-Tribune that he was happy. “I have joy,” he said. “I have understanding. I have knowledge. I’m learning. I’m becoming friendly. I’m submitting myself and being subdued.”
Rozier also had schizophrenia, and it played a devastating role in his adult life before medication got it under control after his basketball years … and after he ended up self-medicating and developing a substance abuse problem that flushed his money.
Not only that, but he also made the mistake so many athletes of the era did: He bought a $1.2 million house, gave half a million dollars to his mother’s church and bought her a $500,000 house. Add that together and you’re looking at $2.2 million.
When Rozier was on the Warriors, he was paying not only the federal tax on his $3.56 million in salary but also California’s confiscatory state income tax.
It doesn’t take an accountant to see how a guy could end up broke, and by the time the property tax bills came due on those houses, along with the price of the drugs … well, things went downhill fast.
But still, Rozier seemed at peace in the later years of his life, finally having his mental illness under control, never testing positive for illicit substances once he got clean, and having a church to go to where he could find succor and support in kind for the donation he once gave it.
The Louisville Basketball Family mourns the loss of Clifford Rozier. Our thoughts and prayers are with his family.
Rest in peace. pic.twitter.com/qETpPCmgWX
— Louisville Men's Basketball (@LouisvilleMBB) July 7, 2018
“Everybody else only knew him as a basketball player,” Kobie Rozier said. “I knew him as a really good guy. Kind guy. Everything he had been through and doing, he was always kind to you.”
All the same, 45 is far too young even for a truly full life to end.
Rest in peace, Cliff.
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