John Wetzel felt surprise, disappointment, even sympathy the first time Walter Davis admitted he was a drug abuser. That was Dec. 12, 1985.
Davis represented the core of the Phoenix Suns, an excellent offensive player, a five-time NBA All-Star, a pillar of the community, a walking advertisement of all that was good and wholesome in the Valley of the Sun.
Wetzel was an assistant to Suns head coach John MacLeod at the time; Wetzel walked softly and kept his observations and opinions to himself.
Davis went down for a second time on April 17 of this year, shortly before Wetzel became MacLeod's successor. On the day vice president and general manager Jerry Colangelo announced that Davis had had a second involvement with cocaine, three players on the current Suns roster were indicted by a Maricopa County (Arizona) grand jury for alleged drug involvement.
Phoenix, reeling from the repercussions of the indictments, staggering beneath the weight of informational leaks, is a franchise under siege, enveloped by a cloud of anxiety and paranoia.
"You get hardened to it after a while," Wetzel said. "Nothing surprises you."
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'Walter Davis surprised me when he first came forward and went in for treatment," Wetzel said. "I watched carefully when he came back, and he seemed to be doing all the right things: always on time, always dressed properly, always polite. More than that, he was playing well."
Wetzel even watched an interview Davis did with a cable network, a segment that was shown on the in-house screens in Memorial Coliseum, where the Suns play their home games.
Four days after the interview was shown, Davis came forward again and entered a treatment center in Van Nuys, Calif., for the second time.
"That was when I felt anger," Wetzel said. "I felt we had been deceived. That was when I understood how you could lose faith in what people might tell you. Here he was, being commended for his comeback, but he was doing it again. Deceiving himself, deceiving us.
"One thing I understand now is: Those who take drugs are masters of disguise. They know how to show no overt signs of trouble. NBA players are briefed by the league, are told there is help available, that there are numbers to call. But they don't always take advantage of it. They don't want to admit they have a problem."
If the Suns already were living under a cloud, Wetzel could have sworn it was getting larger, thicker, darker.
