Former New York Knicks first-round pick Mike Sweetney has died, his wife announced on Thursday.
The Georgetown standout was 43.
A native of Washington, DC, Sweetney was taken with the ninth overall selection of the 2003 NBA Draft.
“To know Mike Sweetney was love to him,” India Sweetney wrote in a Facebook post. “No one loved him more and he loved no one more than his family. His children were the light of his life, and he lived every day to give them the best life possible. He’s been my best friend for 30 years and my husband for almost 20. I’m not sure what we or I will do without him.”
Sweetney would go on to appear in 233 NBA games across four seasons with the Knicks and Chicago Bulls, to whom he was dealt in 2005 in a deal that saw Eddy Curry and Antonio Davis go the other way. Upon leaving the NBA, Sweetney would continue to play professionally with stints in China, Puerto Rico, the Dominican Republic, Uruguay and Venezuela. In 2017, he participated in Ice Cube’s Big3 league as a member of the Company.
That same year, Sweetney revealed that he battled depression throughout his career and attempted suicide during his rookie season. The death of Sweetney’s father, Samuel, ahead of his first training camp put him in a dark place and Sweetney says he didn’t have the ability to ask for help at the time.
“I didn’t like basketball and I just didn’t like life at the time,” Sweetney told Alex Kennedy of USA TODAY. “I went from being a star at Georgetown and having my father at every game, to losing him and not even playing in the NBA. I knew I wasn’t going to be given a chance as a rookie because my coach told me, ‘Hey, I’m not going to play you.’ I had a lot of things going on that were rough for me to handle. I had dug myself into a really deep depression and, at that point, I was really scared to tell anybody.”
Things got drastically worse once he was out of the league.
“I left the NBA in 2007, so around 2008 is when things got really bad and my wife told me that I really needed to get some help,” Sweetney said. “It was to the point that I had moved out of my house, left my family and I was sleeping in parks or cars. I felt like a failure. I just didn’t want to be around anybody and I felt terrible. Then, in 2009, that’s when I got to a point where things started heading in a better direction. I knew I had to pull myself out of that and get myself together. It took some time, but my family and friends had my back and helped me get through those really tough times.”
In the years since, Sweetney began speaking at schools and working with children at risk of suicide.
For four seasons from 2019 to 2023, Sweetney served as an assistant coach at New York City’s Yeshiva University. Last month, Golda Och Academy, a private boys’ program in New Jersey, announced Sweetney as its new head coach.
Sweetney is survived by his wife and three children.
