Vin Baker, with an assist from Shawn Kemp, wants to change lives in Seattle

SEATTLE – Two hulking figures sat at the front of the packed room. One idolized by a fan base through the prism of nostalgia. The other, an underachiever, maybe even a villain in the eyes of that same fan base because he failed to meet expectations created decades ago.

The duo laughed. They shared stories. They showed that however unlikely the circumstances or the routes taken, things can eventually come full circle.

“Thank you for making us feel relevant again,” Vin Baker said to the crowd upon conclusion of the event.

Baker is half-joking because the man sitting next to him for the previous hour remains plenty relevant in these parts. But for Baker, sitting down and sharing memories alongside Shawn Kemp was a moment to remind everyone of his own relevant story, one filled with failure, addiction, recovery and sobriety.

Baker is 53 and it’s been 23 years since he played for the SuperSonics. Seattle is a two-sided equation for Baker – the place where he was provided the opportunity to be a star and instead saw his downfall begin in part because he was the guy brought in decades ago to replace the man sitting next to him that evening at the Edgewater Hotel.

In the time since he was traded away from Seattle after the 2002 season, Baker drank his way out of the NBA. He ended up in rehab four or five times before it finally worked. He continued his journey of sobriety by working as a youth minister in Harlem and as a barista in a Starbucks. He wrote a book about his recovery and finally found his way back to the NBA.

Today, he’s an assistant coach for the Milwaukee Bucks in his eighth season. Giannis Antetokounmpo is a two-time MVP in part because of the work he’s done with Baker. Last year, Baker opened an addiction treatment center in Milwaukee bearing his name.

He’d like to bring one to Seattle, too.

“It’s so interesting because Milwaukee gave me the opportunity to come back and coach. They gave me the opportunity. They drafted me. It’s my city that brought me into the NBA. It’s my home,” Baker said. “But Seattle is the place where everything happened. Everything kind of turned the corner, and so in some ways, it’s as important to me to come back to the city and give back to this community the gift that I have, which is sobriety.

“And it’s not like I’m trying to make up for what happened. It’s more like, ‘Who else?’ Like, if you can write the negative or the negative can be thrown out there, then if I’m in a great space to help people, I’m not going to like pick and choose what cities I go to help save lives. So why not Seattle?”

Before joining Kemp for their fireside chat, Baker sat in a private dining room talking about his journey from being a man who believed death was the only outlet to the recovered, sober man sitting at the table sipping a diet soda.

He looked out on Elliott Bay at what was a very Seattle day – wind, drizzle, clouds – and saw something different from what the everyday resident might see.

“Being here sober, it might look gray to everyone else, but it looks bright to me,” Baker said. “I’m like, ‘Wow, that’s there? I didn’t really see that before.’ I was in such a fog that season of my life, that time of my life.”

Replacing an icon

Sept. 25, 1997, was the date it all happened. Disgruntled by his contract situation, Kemp was dealt out of Seattle as part of a three-team trade that landed him in Cleveland and Baker, after four seasons in Milwaukee, was headed to the Pacific Northwest.

By this point, Baker was a three-time All-Star. His last season with the Bucks, he averaged 21 points and 10.3 rebounds per game at a time when scoring was down across the league. He was an elite power forward back when the position actually meant playing on the inside.

His first season in Seattle couldn’t have gone much better. The Sonics won 61 games and the Pacific Division title. Baker started all 82 games and clicked with Gary Payton in one of the best seasons of his career. Payton was an All-NBA first-team selection and finished third in MVP voting; Baker was selected for the All-NBA second team and was eighth in the MVP race.

But in the long annals of sports history, there’s an idiom that’s often true: It’s never easy to be the one replacing a franchise icon.

No matter what Baker did on the court, he was never going to be Shawn Kemp.

Remember, at the time of the deal, Kemp was one of the elite players in the NBA. He’d evolved his game beyond the contorting, thunderous dunks of his younger days. Kemp finished top 10 in MVP voting and was selected for the All-NBA second team three times each during his Sonics tenure. His final season in Seattle came with an All-Star Game selection for the fifth consecutive season.

Baker wasn’t just replacing Kemp’s mystique. He was replacing a pretty dang good player, too.

“I don’t think a lot of people know this because our lives have taken such a different turn since the trade, but I’m like the biggest Shawn Kemp fan, like anyone else who was a ‘Reign Man’ fan,” Baker said.

Kemp, too, remembered watching Baker from afar. His description of how Baker played: “Scary.”

“I’m being honest with you. Not a lot of guys scared me, but he scared me so much coming out of college because he was so wiry,” Kemp said. “He could shoot the ball, he could dribble the ball. He had the size to play you, had the athletic ability to stay with you and he just had a good mindset. A hardworking player, man, and it showed right away.”

For Baker, it never got better in Seattle than that first season. The pressure to live up to Kemp’s aura and the expectations of being his replacement led Baker down a dark path. The NBA lockout the following season kept him off the court too long. He signed a seven-year, $86 million contract with the Sonics, but by the time 2000 rolled around Baker was hoping for a new environment. While getting ready to be on the Olympic team in Sydney, a possible deal to send Baker to New York fell apart. When he returned from the Olympics, Baker lost his starting spot in Seattle. During the 2002 offseason, he was traded to Boston and four years later drank his way out of the NBA at age 34.

“I was susceptible to the disease like any other person and it’s unfortunate that it happened, and all the things that happened that followed my tenure here,” Baker said. “But I’ve evolved.”

It took nearly five years and several trips to rehab before treatment finally took hold. The son of a Baptist minister and raised in the church, Baker asked for divine help the final time he walked into the rehab center in Connecticut and left ready to take on the challenge of sobriety.

He had no idea it would eventually lead to making coffee.

‘Can I have a latte?’

Imagine walking into your neighborhood chain coffee shop, strolling up to the counter and the man taking your order in the green apron requires looking toward the ceiling to see his face.

“When I went into Starbucks and started working there, I don’t think anyone really understands to walk out at 6-foot-11 and with a green apron on and having moments of like, ‘I cannot believe this is happening,’ and trying to hide but there’s nowhere to hide,” Baker said.

Baker eventually wrote a book about his experience working at Starbucks, an opportunity that came about when he reconnected with former Sonics owner and Starbucks chairperson Howard Schultz. It was a humbling but necessary step in his recovery.

“These moments, really, the humility, the focus, I was so focused on staying sober that at some point, I didn’t even care about what people thought. Staying sober was all that mattered. And then I kind of got proud of myself, like, boy, you’re doing it. Those moments were good,” Baker said.

During his tenure as a barista, the NBA became a possibility again. His first team, the Bucks, reached out asking if Baker would be interested in coaching their summer league team in Las Vegas – a place that would test his sobriety.

He passed and eventually led to a full-time role on the Bucks bench.

Back to Seattle

Nearly two decades passed between Baker’s visits to Seattle. He returned in the summer of 2023 as the keynote speaker at an event for youth put on by the “Rise Above” organization.

“The kids didn’t know who I was, but the parents knew who I was, and I was flanked by George Karl, Lenny Wilkens, Detlef Schrempf, Dale Ellis, so it was a unique moment. It was like I was kind of thrown into the deep end of the pool, like, tell your story to kids who have no idea who you are, and the parents are like, ‘This guy,’ and then I got these legends behind me who are beloved in the city. And so I’m like, ‘Oh, boy, this is it. This is the moment of truth.’ ”

During that event, Baker and Kemp reconnected.

“I have another partner I work with, Gary Payton, and we do a lot of things like this together also. And Gary’s great. I love him to death. But when me and Vin are working these things, we can reflect on some things that me and Gary probably can’t reflect on,” Kemp said.

Baker spent this season’s All-Star weekend not taking a vacation, but back in Seattle in February taking part in another “Rise Above” clinic before sitting down to chat with fans alongside Kemp. He believes that together there is a story for the pair to tell that can be educational and inspirational.

While this may seem like a story of someone seeking redemption for past transgressions, that is not Baker’s motivation. At this point of his life and his journey through sobriety, Baker wants to help – whether that’s on the court or away from the gym.

“So much happened after that trade with the Sonics, and we have an opportunity, and I believe a responsibility, to come together and show, one, that we’re united. Like we’re not going to be defined for the rest of our lives (by) 1997 with that trade,” Baker said. “What we want to be defined by, hopefully, is how we affected our youth, how we change people’s lives. That’s what we can do. This is a real opportunity and as much as it’s fun hanging out with Shawn and having this chat, I see it as an opportunity to change some people’s lives.”