Baker was not happy about being dealt to Seattle prior to the ’97-98 season. He said he was told about the trade by an assistant coach while shooting baskets alone in the gym. Even so, he had a feeling his tenure in Milwaukee might be coming to an end. After all, he had just turned down a contract for nine years and $60 million. He hired David Falk, who had just gotten Alonzo Mourning and Juwan Howard six-year contracts worth more than $100 million. Baker felt he was in their league, talent-wise.
“I knew once Falk got in the picture, things were going to be different,” Baker admits. “I sat in my room for three days after the deal was done. Shawn Kemp to Cleveland, Terrell Brandon and Tyrone Hill to Milwaukee and me to Seattle. Did this really happen? Am I really going to Seattle right now? I sat there for those days wondering what just happened. It didn’t dawn on me that I had to go to Seattle until I started seeing these guys wearing jerseys in their new places. I’m watching SportsCenter and I’m like, I’ve got to get my butt up out of here and get to Seattle—quickly.”
Baker now feels that being traded for a guy who was beloved in Seattle messed with his self-esteem. How was he going to replace Kemp? Nevermind that Baker was averaging 20 points and 10 rebounds a game at the time. Kemp and Gary Payton were to Seattle what Malone and Stockton were to Utah. Together they had taken the Sonics to the NBA Finals (where they fell to Michael Jordan and the Chicago Bulls). The pressure was on. Not only was Baker replacing a franchise legend, he would be playing for a new contract, too.
“The people in Seattle were like, Who is this?” Baker recalls. “So what if he’s averaged 20 and 10—he’s not Shawn Kemp!”
During the ’97-98 season, Baker proved to be a capable replacement for Kemp, averaging 19.2 points and 8 rebounds and playing in his fourth straight All-Star Game. Seattle won 61 games and beat Minnesota in the first round of the Playoffs but was eliminated by the Lakers in the conference semifinals, four games to one.
“That was my first experience of having a meltdown,” Baker says. “We were the number one seed and we lost. I put everything on me. After the Playoff series against the Lakers, I went into a tremendous tailspin. I just felt like I had let the city down and the team down. I really thought we had an opportunity to get to the Finals. Me and Gary, who was my best friend at the time, went to Cancun, and I didn’t even leave the room. I remember Gary coming to the room and saying, ‘What you going to do, sit in the room all day?’ I just didn’t feel like moving. It sent me to a place that I didn’t want to go. That’s where the spiral began to happen.”
Seattle still rewarded Baker for his season with a seven-year, $86 million contract. Unfortunately, the pressures that came with that contract led to a life of drinking and bad decisions, which eventually left Baker broke.
“I knew he was drinking,” says his father, the Reverend James Baker. “But during the time that he was drinking, I never saw him drunk. Vin was a closet drinker. I went to Seattle and stayed with him for three months and never saw him take a drink. Vin had a glass of champagne in front of me one time, and that was when he was drafted. I would love to see him get back on the right track, because he’s such a wonderful guy. I think that’s what got him into trouble in the first place. I know he was taken advantage of. I didn’t know that much about the sports world—you start believing in people and trusting them and the next thing you know, things start happening and you don’t know how to stop it. He didn’t know how to tell people ‘No.’ Vin thought everybody was his friend and that he didn’t have any enemies. Just like that restaurant he bought.” (Baker sunk several million dollars into Vinnie’s Saybrook Fish House in Connecticut and never got a dime out of it.) “He didn’t realize that there are wolves out there waiting to take him down,” his father says.
These days you can find 39-year-old Vinnie Baker back where he started, at Old Saybrook High School in Connecticut. He is the head coach of the freshman basketball team that went 7-3 this season. Most importantly, Baker is clean. He’s an active participant in Alcoholics Anonymous, goes to church on a regular basis and maintains that, overall, he’s happy.
Now all he wants to do is pass on to his players and the young people who play the game collegiately and professionally what he has learned. He wants to introduce his life experience into his teaching. He wants to warn his players ahead of time about the damage they can do to their lives. “I want young people to understand that you have to take care of yourself before you can take care of others,” Baker says. “And even then you have to be careful of the company that you keep. You have to take care of yourself spiritually, emotionally and physically. It’s just that simple.”
“When Vin and I got together, his mental state was tired,” says Mason, who has handled Baker’s affairs going on three years. “He was worn out and ready to change his life. I think he understands that there was a purpose as to why he went through what he went through. I know his worth when his head is together. He had to change his way of thinking. He knows that alcohol is a daily fight for him. The best way to explain Vin’s alcoholism, he has to keep God first and everything else will be all right. All that I can do is give him the support he needs and help him understand that he’s still a young man and there is still a lot of work left to be done. He definitely has his priorities in order.”
The book of Proverbs speaks of wisdom as one of those things we should seek to acquire with passion. In other words, for one to survive in this world, you must be wise. The typical athlete finds ways to overcome his mistakes; the great athlete learns from them.
There may be greatness left in Vin Baker yet.
