RIP Fab Melo

[Assembly Hall]

Just sad.....

http://heavy.com/sports/2017/02/did-fab-melo-die-cause-of-death-how-age-rip-how-old-family-nba-syracuse-celtics-player-stats-brazil-where-who/

[Boston Red]

Did we not do this two months ago?

[Assembly Hall]

Did we not do this two months ago?

Well then maybe I have been hoaxed on one of my sites?

[Boston Red]

No, I did a search and did not find a thread about it. He died in February, and I thought we already had done this thread, but I must have been thinking of another site. Sorry.

[Revering4Blue]

There are so many memories Adam Ross wants to share, so many stories. One, though, stands out most among them all.

It was winter 2010. Eighteen months earlier, Ross had been introduced to a 7'0", 255-pound Brazilian named Fabricio Paulino de Melo. The teenager had recently enrolled in Sagemont School in Weston, Florida, where Ross was the basketball coach.

Melo had come to the United States without any parents—and without knowing much English—at the behest of some coaches and agent-like figures from Brazil. They believed the NBA was part of his future, even though he had only been playing basketball for a few years. A heart attack had killed his father when Melo was just a boy, and Melo's mother wanted her son to receive an education in the U.S. and to be able to continue playing basketball, too.

Seven years later, on Feb. 11, 2017, Melo's lifeless body was discovered in the Juiz de Fora home of his mother and his two sisters. A heart attack reportedly killed him, according to Bud Poliquin of Syracuse.com. He was only 26.

He never reached the heights his family and his friends assumed he would. He made it to college but spent two scandal-ridden years at Syracuse before leaving school. He made it to the NBA as a first-round pick but appeared in just six total games.

Yet those who knew him best don't consider his career a failure.

"Everyone is quick to label him a bust or a flop," Ross says, "but the truth is: put yourself in his shoes. Imagine that you're 16 and dropped in a foreign country without your parents and you're basically on your own, and if you don't become an NBA All-Star, we're going to call you a bust."

Less than a week has passed since Melo died. Ross pauses a moment, then continues.

"If you look at it that way, I'd say Fab was an overachiever. That's the story I'm still waiting for someone to write."

This story won't be that one. But it won't be about how much of a bust Fab Melo was either. Life, after all, isn't black or white.

To understand Fab Melo's life, you have to be willing to view it in gray.

http://bleacherreport.com/articles/2693197-death-of-once-promising-fab-melo-leaves-friends-wondering-what-could-have-been