Kenny Anderson couldn’t hide his story any longer.
He wanted to help himself, help others, and the former Queens basketball prodigy turned NBA star figured revealing he was sexually abused as a child was the perfect solution.
Anderson released the dark moments of his childhood during the Off-Broadway play, “The Penis Monologues,” and reiterated them to The Post yesterday.
“That’s why I got my heart filled with anger somewhat,” the former Nets star and New York City high school legend said. “You have everything in the world, but you’re still miserable. That’s who I was.”
He was twice sexually abused, first by “a neighborhood guy on the block,” at age 8 before he moved to Lefrak City, Queens, and then two years later, by a youth basketball coach. Each act happened once and was never repeated, Anderson said. Neither person, who Anderson, 42, declined to reveal, was attached to Archbishop Molloy, his alma mater, or the AAU programs he played with, Riverside Church or the New York Gauchos.
Anderson, who has fathered eight children by five women, doesn’t plan to confront either man, but will reveal their names — he has only told his third wife Natasha up to this point — and the details of the events in his autobiographical book, entitled, “Instructions not Included,” which he plans to release next March.
“It’s therapeutic for me,” the 14-year NBA veteran and Georgia Tech player said. “When you’re a kid you don’t know what’s going on, somebody touching you or fondling you, doing other stuff. … I didn’t want to let anybody know.”
He began thinking about releasing the information when he started working on his book, and spontaneously let out his secret during the “The Penis Monologues,” in which Anderson and several other NBA players talk about the particular part of the anatomy and how it can create problems or complications.
“When I became who I was, I threw that sh– in the closet,” said Anderson, who was fired from his job as the varsity basketball coach at David Posnack Jewish Day School in Davie, Fla. following a drunk-driving arrest in May. “You can mess up a kid like that mentally, but it wasn’t able to do that to me all the way because of what happened to me along the way. I became a successful basketball player, that’s what covered it. But imagine if I wasn’t? If I was an average Joe?”
Anderson said he hopes getting the harrowing events off his chest may encourage others to do the same. He also wants to cleanse himself of built-up anger, and in doing so illustrate his own character, why he was so troubled as a youngster and why he has run into problems in his life.
“I don’t know, maybe I needed that,” he said of coming out about his abuse. “Maybe I’ll be a different person [now], my attitude and persona might be different, the way I look at things, the way I feel about people.
“This is therapy for me, and maybe people who follow me or are fans of mine, they went through this. More people will talk and let more people know what’s going on in their lives, catch it early.”