CLEVELAND – Cleveland Browns Wide Receiver Josh Gordon has written a letter to Charles Barkley & Company admitting he has a problem, according to medium.com.
Gordon’s letter posted to medium.com states “Yes, I have a ‘problem,’ but it’s not the one all of you seem to think it is.”
In the letter, Gordon calls out a few commentators who have made judgments about his behavior.
Again, I make no excuses for my past. That culture didn’t make me do anything I didn’t want to do, but when you judge me without actually knowing me, you deny the existence of the world I come from.
Gordon explains in the letter what ‘world’ he speaks of — one with a father that was out of the picture, a single mother with three sons, a life of poverty, and large stretches of his adolescence where he had to fend for himself.
I don’t speak of it often, and even less so publicly, but I faced a fair amount of hardship growing up. My father was pretty much out of the picture, which left my mom to fend for herself with three sons at home. She did the best she could, but there were large stretches of time as an adolescent when I was completely alone — with no supervision, no one to guide me, and no one to keep me in line.
We lived in a poor section of Houston called Fondren, and to say it was a rough place would be putting it lightly. The other kids in the neighborhood weren’t well off, either, but it always felt like we had even less to our name. We moved at least seven times, and things were so bad sometimes, there were days I would come home from school and there would be no electricity, heat or hot water.
Read more of this story at http://www.newsnet5.com/sports/josh-gordon-writes-letter-admitting-he-has-a-problem
