Homer or Shakespeare could not have written the tale of Vin Baker any better.
It’s hard to imagine how someone so talented even got to the point of having to make a comeback. In his prime, Baker was one of the best post players in the league. Possessing a deft touch inside, an ability to elevate quickly and enough athleticism to run the floor and handle the ball if he had to, he was the complete package. Somewhere along the line, however, something changed.
Relatively unknown to most NBA fans coming out of Hartford in 1993, Baker was selected eighth overall by the Milwaukee Bucks. With the more highly touted Rodney Rogers of Wake Forest still on the draft board, many fans thought Mike Dunleavy and Milwaukee had made a mistake, and with Dunleavy it would not have been the first. However, those thoughts were quickly erased when the wiry but cat-quick Baker donned the hideous purple garb of the Bucks.
A skinny 6-foot-11 forward — listed at 255 but probably closer to 240 — Baker started 63 games as a rookie, most of them out of position at center. Nevertheless, he averaged 13.5 points and 7.6 rebounds per contest in his NBA maiden voyage, netting him a spot on the league’s All-Rookie First Team at season’s end.
One season later, he established himself as one of the top up-and-comers in the Association, earning a berth on the All-Star team, his first of three career selections. He followed that season by pacing the Bucks in scoring at 21.1 points per game in 1995-96.
In his 1996-97 campaign, Baker became the first Buck since Kareem Abdul-Jabbar to average 20 and 10 in a season. Even with No. 1 pick Glenn Robinson on board, the skinny kid from Hartford was clearly Milwaukee’s best player.
That distinction would be short lived, though, as Baker was shipped to Seattle in a three-team deal before the 1997-98 season. Ironically enough, the Sonics traded Shawn Kemp, another superstar on his last legs of greatness for Baker. In Seattle he reached the height of his success, making the All-NBA Second Team. It was also in Seattle that his downfall began. After the 1998 lockout, Baker and the rest of the Sonics returned to Seattle. The problem was that it looked like the rest of the Sonics were inside of Baker. Noticeably out of shape, he struggled to 13.8 points per game in a lockout and injury shortened season. Despite a max contract the following offseason, he never could regain his old form. Finally, in 2002, Seattle had enough of Baker’s large gut and even larger salary and sent him to Boston, where he would only start nine games in 2002-2003.
Clearly, something was wrong with Baker. How could one of the best forwards in the NBA plummet from All-NBA status to laughingstock?
Vin Baker was and is an alcoholic. Now, I know alcoholic is a term that gets thrown around freely on this campus, usually in a bragging sense, but Baker was not like some loser frat boy who boasts to his buddies that he’s an alcoholic. Baker had a real problem with alcohol, and it was ruining his career and his life.
As rumors of problems became public, Baker soon became a running joke in Boston and the rest of the country. For the first time, Vin Baker was seen as a bad guy — a locker room cancer. Eventually the team had enough and suspended him.
The son of a Baptist minister, Baker had always been one of the few “good guys” among professional athletes. He sang in his dad’s church choir. He donated money to charity — no Sporting News list of charitable athletes was complete without him. All in all, Baker was a guy you wanted to root for. Yet, as he disappeared into suspension and obscurity, that became harder and harder to do.
This is where the sad tale of Vin Baker was supposed to end. A classic tragic hero, Baker had plummeted from the pinnacle of the NBA to the depths of suspension. But unlike Achilles, Vinny B. lived to fight another day. After his much talked about suspension from the Celtics, Baker finally got himself some help. He got himself into rehab, then into the best shape of his career. No more “fat, drunk” Vin.
When the Celtics traded away Antoine Walker before the season, they needed someone to pick up the scoring slack. In stepped Baker — not the Vin Baker that the Celtics suspended last season, but the Vin Baker that Bucks fans came to know and love. Boston needed Vin Baker. More importantly, Baker needed Boston. While his 15.1 points per game average this season is a far cry from the 20-plus fans were accustomed to in his prime, he is back on the court and contributing. Perhaps when he sunk a game-winning fadeaway jumper to beat the Indiana Pacers last Tuesday, his strange odyssey finally came full circle. One thing’s for sure: it’s good to see Vin Baker back.
