For Lonnie Walker IV, his toughest moment wasn’t getting hurt or getting dropped from the Lakers’ starting lineup.
It wasn’t losing his spot in the rotation or being let go in free agency.
No, life had shown him what really tough was.
For one of the newest Nets, his most difficult challenge was finally deciding to open up about the sexual abuse he had survived as a child from the age of 7 to 10. It was cutting off the hair he had grown as a coping mechanism and making a statement he thought would help others out who had endured similar horrors.
Turns out, the cathartic reveal — and hearing from fellow survivors — helped him even more.
“Growing up, I was sexually assaulted, and there was a point of time where I didn’t really know much about anything else besides just that,” Walker said this week on the “Voice of the Nets” podcast. “So I grew my hair up. I wanted to feel like I had some type of ownership in my life, or some type of something that I can call mine. … I just had my hair. I used to always touch it, used to always play with it. Kept me sane. That’s what really helped me out, helped disguise a lot of things, helped me get by, even sometimes if I wasn’t the happiest person in the world. …
“And once I hit a point where I was reaching a new chapter in my life, I decided to cut it. Understanding the past is the past and me knowing the bigger picture, which is knowing that I’m not the only one.”
A haircut and a message
Walker — who signed a one-year, veteran minimum deal with the Nets on Monday — was the No. 18 overall pick by the Spurs in the 2018 NBA Draft and spent four years in San Antonio. After signing with the Lakers last offseason, Walker averaged 14.7 points per game as part of the starting lineup until hurting his knee in late December and losing his spot in the team’s midseason makeover. He came back to make crucial contributions in the Lakers’ Western Conference semifinals triumph over the Warriors.
The 24-year-old began to grow out his trademark hair in middle school. He wore it as a high school star in Reading, Pa., and at the University of Miami and in the NBA with the Spurs.
“It was honestly a costume, a disguise,” Walker said. “But as I got older, it gave me confidence. It gave me my swagger. It gave me who I was. When people thought of Lonnie, [they] thought of me with the hair. Then you go on to draft day where I had the floating hat. So it didn’t really become a disguise once I came into the league, it became just who I was, what I represented as far as having your own swag and your own confidence and your own aura.”
Until three years ago, when Walker made an emotional Instagram post revealing what had happened to him. During that summer before fifth grade, he wrote in the caption, around family members who had not been present as much, he was “sexually harassed, raped, abused.” The post included video footage of Walker cutting off his hair.
“That was one of the most important moments,” Walker said on the podcast. “People always asked, ‘Are you going to ever cut your hair?’ And I’d be like, ‘Uh, not really.’ Because I had such a deep bond with it as far as my past and understanding what it really was, more than people really understood.
“So once I got it cut, it felt like weight off my back more than I thought. All the pressure and all the random animosity or anger that I would have, it just felt like, I cut it off, and it’s like, the past is the past, you’re entering a new realm, a new part of your life.”
Walker has a giving side: He operates the Lonnie Walker IV Foundation and runs a basketball camp back in hardscrabble Reading. But what he did largely as a way to give other sexual abuse survivors hope also gave him an unexpected catharsis.
“Me voicing my story, me telling others what happened would help, whether it was one person or 1,000 people, that’s what catapulted me into cutting my hair,” said Walker. “But there’s so many other people that need to hear this, that can relate to this, that can understand that there’s light at the end of the tunnel.
“And, honestly, as much as I thought I was helping others, it helped me out tenfold, hearing the amount of people that showed love: ‘Hey, I’ve been through this before, and I understand and thank you.’ … It was something that I was terrified to speak on. But once I got to speak on it and understand that I’m not the only one, it made my life so much easier.”
Strength from family
Walker’s parents — Tamica Wall and Lonnie III, a former standout at Alvernia University — were not aware of the abuse their son was enduring. (“The hardest thing for me was my father and mother didn’t really know too much, so that was kind of a hard transition,” Walker recounted on the podcast.)
Though his parents are separated, both have been huge parts of Walker’s life at various times in different ways. Walker and his mother battled homelessness in Reading; his father trained him to become a future NBA player.
It was another family member, Walker said, who helped him reach an epiphany and publicly speak about the abuse. That was his grandmother.
“There’s a point of time where I had flashbacks or…where I’m not in the greatest of moods, and my grandma was one of the few people that talked to me and calmed me down and let me see a completely different perspective that I never got to see,” Walker said. “She used to always say you’re a beacon in life, being able to spread your messages and help others. …
“My grandma really helped me lock in and say I’m ready to cut [my hair]. I’m ready to get past [it]. … And through it all, I found internal peace and happiness within myself.”
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