Chris Dudley, Always Doing Right

November 12, 2012, 3:52 pm

Chris Dudley was a member of the Portland Trail Blazers from 1993-1997 and he played Center in the NBA for 16 seasons.  He also happens to have type 1 diabetes and he was the first player to ever balance diabetes with an NBA career.  He joined Chad on Flight 750 Friday to talk about the challenge of living with diabetes.

Dudley states that he was diagnosed with the disease at age 16 and really did not know what it was.  His first question was whether or not he would live.  When he found out that he wasn’t at risk of dying he asked the other question that most 16-year-olds want to know.  Will he able to play sports?  The answer ended up being one of the most important answers he has ever gotten.

“As long as you take care of yourself and monitor your condition at all times, you can play sports.”

Dudley also said it took him awhile before he was fully comfortable with who he was and completely open about his disease because nobody had ever played in the NBA with diabetes before.  But by the time he was in Portland around his third or fourth season, he had fully embraced his condition.  And then in the 1993-1994 season, he started the Chris Dudley Foundation, which supports diabetes research and provides educational programs for people with the disease.

The main purpose of the foundation is to educate people on how to keep their condition under control.

“You have diabetes, it does not have you.  You can still follow your dreams - whatever those dreams may be - and you can still live a happy, healthy, active life.”

Take a listen to the interview and be sure and listen on Wednesday November 14, as we bring Dudley and Kendall Simmons on board for World Diabetes Day.