Athletes are glorified as hero's, champions, and legends. What about the ones that fall short, or the ones who end up on the other end of the spectrum. This my friends is the other end of the spectrum.

Nick Anderson was born on January 20th, 1968 in Chicago, Illinois. Tragedy struck early for Nick Anderson when his best friend and high school teammate Ben "Benji" Wilson was shot and killed during their senior year of high school. Benji Wilson was the most highly recruited high school player that year. Nick Anderson played his college ball at the University of Illinois where he wore #25 in honor of Benji Wilson.

In 1989 as the 11th overall pick Nick Anderson was the first player ever drafted by the Orlando Magic. He really started to come into his own in the 91-92 season where he averaged 19 ppg and 6 rpg. Before they drafted Shaquille O'Neal in the 93-94 season he was Orlando's leading scorer. The year before the Magic had drafted Anfernee "Penny" Hardaway. Along with Dennis Scott, this looked like a promising team to make a run in the mid nineties.

In 1995, the Magic reached the NBA Championship. In the second round they faced Michael Jordan and the Chicago Bulls. In game one, Nick Anderson played hero. With 20 seconds left the Magic were down by a point. Nick Anderson stole the ball from Michael Jordan which set up a game winning lay-up.

The Magic went on to win the series against Chicago. After defeating the Pacers in the next round they were set to play the defending NBA champions, the Houston Rockets. In Game One of that series, Nick Anderson single-handedly fell off from mountain peak that his career was at. The Magic had home court advantage throughout the series, and in Game One in Orlando they were up by three points with less then a minute left. Nick Anderson missed four consecutive free throws. I wish I could find the picture of him after missing the free throws, it's been stuck in my mind forever. The Rockets ended up tying the game up with a three pointer and winning in overtime. The Rockets swept the Orlando Magic in the series.

Nick Anderson was around a 70% free throw shooter before that series, since that series his free throw percentage was never higher then 63%, going to as low as 40% one year. The Magic broke up with Shaq and Penny Hardaway eventually leaving.

Shaq headed west to Los Angeles after the 1995-1996 season. In 2000, Hardaway went to the Phoenix Suns and Nick Anderson was traded to the Sacramento Kings. Nick Anderson was the last player of the original roster of the Orlando Magic to leave the team. He went on to have career lows with the Kings where he spent two NBA seasons. He spent his last year in the NBA with the Memphis Grizzlies in the 2001-2002 season.

Nick Anderson was actually revolutionary for the concept of Sports Psychology. He had seen a psychologist that specialized in sports because of the trauma that missing four consecutive free throws in the NBA Finals caused him. In 2006 the Magic held a tribute to Nick Anderson and against popular demands his jersey was never retired. Actually the franchise has never retired a jersey to this day.

This has been a sports tragedy brought to you by Verbal Intercourse. Pictures courtesy of nba.com and Google Images. Some information and stats were borrowed from Wikipedia and databasebasketball.com