Darren Collison, the Indiana Pacers’ starting point guard for the last two seasons, has retired from the game, at age 31. His legacy, like his on court play, will likely bring little exaltation.
Darren Collison’s retirement (announced via a published letter, Friday night, on ESPN’s The Undefeated) brings his career to an unexpected end, right before it was ready to take another turn, likely to another market.
Collison’s 10-year career was interesting in how ordinary it was. Many players, like him, enter the NBA brimming with promise, flirt but never fulfill it, reinvent themselves as a useful role player and hang on until their ability wanes. Collison exits right as a decline became inevitable.
He first rose to promise as the steady pilot of the loaded UCLA Bruins from 2005 to 2009. Those teams featured plenty of future NBA players (Arron Afflalo, Jordan Farmar, Luc Mbah a Moute, Russell Westbrook, Kevin Love and Jrue Holiday to name six), went to 3 Final Fours and played in the 2006 National Championship Game, which they lost to an even more loaded Florida Gators team.
After an outstanding debut season where he admirably filled in for an injured Chris Paul, the Indiana Pacers targeted him as the type of point guard they needed to build a future contender with. The 2011 Pacers had a rookie Paul George, Roy Hibbert and Brandon Rush entering their third seasons, and Tyler Hansbrough beginning his second. Not exactly a murder’s row, but Collison fit those player’s timelines. It helped that Danny Granger was coming off back-to-back seasons with 24 ppg or more; even though it was not yet known that his best years were already behind him.
That’s how it goes. You look back in hindsight and fissures are always easier to spot than they are in the context of the present moment. That 2011 team, led by Collison, was a perfect example.
For most of the year, they looked like a bunch of young players who would never fulfill their promise, then a coaching change (replacing Jim O’Brien with Frank Vogel) unlocked their potential. The Pacers rallied, made the playoffs, caused abject terror in the hearts of the previously very confident Chicago Bulls, and hit the next offseason ready to make a move to transform the future into the present.
There were two significant moves in the summer of 2011, but one had a bigger impact on Collison: the trade for George Hill. Hill was acquired to be a sixth man, the combo guard who could spell either Collison or George, then the starting two-guard. Hill filled that role too well. He excelled, played up to, if not better than Collison. He took Collison’s starting job later in the season, then was the starting point guard for the playoffs. He would remain Indiana’s starting one for the next four seasons.
Hill’s success came at Collison’s expense, and began a pattern of how Collison would be viewed for the rest of his career: as replaceable. No one was ever happy with Collison as their starting point guard. It didn’t matter that the team was in capable hands, people always wished for it to be anyone else’s hands rather than his. Collison’s gifts are not the ones that provoke oohs and awes. Collison is sure-handed and abhors turnovers, the vanilla of ice cream flavors, always reliable to be both satisfying and illicit giggles for the buyers lack of boldness.
Everywhere Collison went the public’s “meh” followed him. In brief stays with the Mavericks and Clippers, Collison was the swing guard, good-enough to play a role, but not good enough to be a regular starter. He had to move to Sacramento to find a starting role, but it was on a terrible Kings team, and even then he played mostly off-the-bench his second season in purple and gray.
Also, in Sacramento came his greatest personal low, when he plead guilty to domestic battery.
"“Words cannot describe the feelings and regret that I have been experiencing the last few months,” Collison said at the time through a team statement (via ESPN). “This is far from who I am as a person and not something I am proud of…I have apologized to my beautiful wife that I have known and loved since high school.”"
Two years later, Collison got a shot at personal and professional redemption back with the Indiana Pacers. Collison played well on the court and was able to maintain his marriage.
But that lingering view of Collison, the replaceable, never left him. Even as he led the league in three-point percentage (he didn’t shoot worse than 40% during the final four years of his career) his positive attributes were always publicly dismissed, and his limitations accentuated. Such is the standard life of an NBA player. You give your best for as long as you can, many observers belittle your accomplishments, and then you get replaced.
And now, after a decade in the NBA, Collison leaves intent on involving himself more in his life as a Jehovah’s Witness.
"“I receive so much joy from volunteering to help others and participating in a worldwide ministry,” Collison wrote to The Undefeated. “The joy I feel is unmatched.”"
As he lets basketball go, he pledges to embrace his faith and his family more. Not the flashiest of retirement plans. It’s rather steady, normal, unexciting, but also meaningful. Rather fitting for a player who’s play was often described likewise.