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Slam Dunk: Chris Dudley and His Basketball Camp
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After excelling at pro basketball, Chris Dudley has dedicated his life to helping children with diabetes find joy and self-confidence through athletics
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By Oona Short
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Diabetes Focus Third Quarter, 2005
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 Chris Dudley had always dreamed of being a professional basketball player. By the time he was 16, it seemed his dream might come true. He was tall, muscular, an outstanding player on his high school team. He was also—though he didn’t realize it then—showing signs of diabetes.
“I didn’t know what was going on,” Dudley recalls. “I was drinking a ton, going to the bathroom all the time. I took a home test my dad got at the drugstore and the number came out super high.”
Dudley’s parents took him to a doctor who confirmed he had type 1 diabetes. “My first question was, ‘Can I still play basketball?’ As soon as the doctor said yes, I felt okay,” remembers Dudley, now retired after 16 years as a top defensive player in the National Basketball Association. Thankfully, his doctor encouraged sports, which was not always the norm in 1981. “He told me I’d have to take care of myself, be disciplined,” says Dudley.
Making adjustments wasn’t easy at first. “It took a while to learn to regulate myself when I was exercising,” he says. “I had to test all the time. I felt self-conscious when the other guys on my team noticed what I was doing, or when I couldn’t eat the same foods they were. I didn’t want people to know I had diabetes. Not that I’d hide it or lie about it—but kids just don’t want to be different.”
In 1987, Dudley—by then grown to his full 6'11" and a three-time First Team Ivy League player at Yale—was signed by the Cleveland Cavaliers. It was the first of five teams he played for in a career that saw him score an impressive 5,457 rebounds. (His 325 offensive rebounds in 1994/95 tied the single-season record for the Portland Trailblazers, where he ended his playing days.) “I was a little gun-shy at first about having teammates know I had diabetes,” he says. “I felt I had to play extra hard to prove what someone with diabetes could do.”
That determination meant a game-day regimen of as many as 14 glucose tests: “I couldn’t test on my arm, because it’d get too sweaty at the shoot-arounds [the team’s practice sessions], so I’d test on my finger. My finger was pretty resilient. Sometimes it felt really uncomfortable, but in my whole career I never had to come out of a game because of diabetes.”
After his first two seasons in the NBA, Dudley felt more confident of himself and became more public about his disease. In 1994, he formed The Dudley Foundation Supporting Kids with Diabetes, which promotes diabetes education and research: “Kids would write me incredible letters—‘I’m 9 years old,’ or ‘I’m 10 years old. I have diabetes. I want to play sports. Can I do it?’ One night in Orlando, a young man waited for me after a game. He was newly diagnosed and very down. We talked a little bit. A while later, I got a letter from his parents saying that his whole attitude had changed.”
The Dudley Foundation’s biggest project—one that’s touched the lives of all those involved with it—was started by a conversation Dudley had with his wife, Christine, and his sister, Tasha, one night in 1994. “We were thinking of different activities we could fund,” he recalls. “We’d spent some time at a nearby camp for kids with diabetes. Suddenly, all the pieces came together: ‘Of course! A basketball camp for kids with diabetes. It’s perfect.’”
It may have been a perfect idea, but it was also a complicated one. “It’s really two camps in one,” notes Dudley, “a sports camp and a diabetes camp. We needed two complete staffs with their own directors. Each had to understand the needs of the other. We spent the next year recruiting two endocrinologists, five nurses, a trained dietitian, thirteen counselors and eight coaches. Almost all of them are still with the camp.”
The Chris Dudley Basketball Camp for Kids with Diabetes—the first camp of its kind—opened in 1995 in Vernonia, OR, 45 minutes west of Portland. Seventy-five boys and girls aged 10 to 17 attend every summer. Nearly three quarters are returnees. They come from all around the U.S., and from as far away as Holland and Japan. During their week at camp, they learn basic basketball skills and techniques. They have their blood tested at least six times a day, with spot checks as needed. They learn how to manage diabetes and incorporate it into an active lifestyle. But that’s not all they learn.
“The kids find out they’re not alone,” says Dudley. “They form bonds with each other, and with us, that last for years. Here they learn they can just be themselves.”
Chris Dudley—who once asked if a diabetic could play basketball—has now answered that question for hundreds of young people. He tells them they can do anything they want to do, as long as they take care of themselves and are disciplined. He tells them not to hide their diabetes—or hide from it. He also tells them to have their shoelaces tied and be ready to come into the game.
He admits, though, that he wasn’t always sure how successful the camp would be. “I wondered if kids would want to come to a camp run by someone they never heard of,” he says. “But it was never about me.”
And sometimes, campers’ enthusiasm for the experience surprises even him. “I remember one regular camper who started coming to us when he was around 10 or 11,” Dudley recalls. “He used to go to church every week and ask God for a cure for diabetes. One Sunday, his parents noticed he’d stopped praying. They said, ‘Don’t you want a cure for diabetes anymore?’ The boy said, ‘Yes, but not until I’m too old to go to Chris Dudley’s camp!’”
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