ESPN Films 'Unguarded': Inside Chris Herren's Drug-Addled Secret Life

It begins the way so many other stories like this do. Chris Herren's potential was abound. He had court vision and could run the point in a way that made him a star as a high schooler in Fall River, Mass. Then Boston College came calling, swooped up the hometown hero and provided him the chance of a lifetime. 

Even if you don't know exactly what happens next, you still have an idea—drugs, downfall, potential wasted and lives ruined. If ESPN Films is airing a documentary on a subject, it usually doesn't end with a ticker-tape parade.

No, the uplifting, make-grown-men-tear-up moments come on Sunday night SportsCenter—bits done with the perfect mixture of reporting, archival footage and editing to elicit quivering from Pete in Pittsburgh and Bob in Bakersfield. 

But Tuesday nights, the 30 for 30 nights, those are more hard-hitting, introspective explorations of topics that can make you uncomfortable. The documentaries don't paint sports in pastels and sepia tones—they show how real life seeps into what transpires between the sidelines. 

Herren's tale is along the same lines. This series has shown us the sad circumstances surrounding Len Bias's death. It's broken down the wanton disregard for rules that earned SMU football the death penalty. It's done the Steve Bartman story and Pablo Escobar's connection to soccer.

In this installment, entitled Unguarded, director Jonathan Hock digs into the unraveling of Herren's life and basketball career, which is marred by failed drug tests at Boston College and Fresno State, and an uninspired NBA career that even an opportunity with the Celtics couldn't save. 

The hometown hero got a shot with the local big-time college and the legendary backyard NBA team, and both went wrong. All part of a life, Hock writes in his "Director's Take" on ESPN.com, that was lost in an "abyss of alcohol and drug addiction, a decade-long nightmare in which he would lose everything that ever mattered to him."

Harren's nadir came in 2004 in a Dunkin' Donuts parking lot when he was arrested for heroin possession and driving under the influence. The director does maintain that this tale does have a turnaround—Harren's sobriety—that he'll explore in the film. 

Still, like so many stories told about lost potential, this one has a controlled substance attached to it.