The amazing story of Caleb Swanigan came to a terrible end
As someone who's existed adjacent to Purdue basketball history for the better part of two decades now, I'm sometimes asked for my pick for the greatest performance I've ever seen from a Boilermaker.
It was this: On Jan 24 of 2017, Purdue traveled to East Lansing to face Michigan State, an atypically middling Spartan team, middling in part because months earlier Caleb Swanigan had reneged on a commitment to Tom Izzo and opted for the Boilermakers instead.
The Breslin Center, under normal circumstances, is a snakepit not to be trifled with.
When Michigan State's back is to the wall, you can add an additional layer of difficulty.
When there's context like this driving the emotional undercurrent of the environment, you have to be a special kind of something not to be fazed by it.
Earlier in the afternoon, an ESPN article was published chronicling the impossible circumstances Swanigan had improbably overcome to reach this moment, to stand on this stage, as perhaps the best, and certainly the most inspirational, player in college basketball.
The ESPN piece documented Swanigan's remarkable physical transformation, the fact that a player who once flirted with four bills on the scale had become something of a new man. That story armed the Izzone with an arsenal of fat jokes to hurl at Purdue's star, even if you really had to take some liberties with the meaning of "fat" in that moment to apply to the Boilermakers' wrecking machine of a sophomore. One green-and-white-clad student, I remember plain as day, ritualistically shouted "Cheesecake" at Swanigan, a nod to the article reporting Swanigan's affinity for the dessert.
Faced with vitriol uncommon for even the Big Ten — where skin must be become thickened like leather for those in the figurative arena — Swanigan was amazing, unaffected by anything and everything coming his way. He finished with 25 points, 17 rebounds and a colossal flipping of the bird to his nemeses on the court and off.
As the clock wound down en route to an 84-73 Purdue win, that clever young man in the Izzone had been drained of his gusto, his taunts fading from an emphatic "Cheesecake!" at the start of the game to something more like a deflated and defeated and kind of pathetic "Cheesecake?" whimper by the end.
Michigan State's players had been physically and competitively overmatched by the player who almost joined them, beaten in every way, by a 20-year-old sophomore who shed taunts and shed bodies with a distinct automation about him. I don't know if I've seen a college player able to just turn everything else off and kick the ass of everything in his path like I saw that night, from courtside.
And I'll tell you that the Caleb Swanigan Experience was very different courtside, where you could feel his intensity and hear the unnatural sounds other large humans made when they took contact from this real-life Terminator. You could see the sweat beaten off them, like a sopping-wet towel thrown against a wall. I first saw it when Purdue beat Florida in Connecticut Swanigan's freshman year. It was then that I thought I'd never seen anything like this guy at the college level, and Purdue already had Isaac Haas. Swanigan didn't just beat you; he derived joy from punishing you.
That night at Michigan State, that was the greatest performance I've seen at Purdue. It wasn't the most points. It wasn't the most rebounds. It wasn't the most consequential win. It probably isn't the game you'd pick if you were asked the same question. But it was damn amazing to anyone who views these games through the lens that these are human beings — young ones — out there competing in a fishbowl.
It was the steeliest version of a player who I'll always remember for his ability to detach and focus and compete, for the machinelike drive that made him a great player as well as a story that challenged the boundaries of hopes and dreams.
I can't say I ever really came to know Caleb Swanigan the human being. I covered him for several years. I was probably the first reporter to cover him as a recruit, back when you had to suspend some measure of disbelief to see a future McDonald's All-American in that 350-some-pound high school freshman.
But I just kind of knew of him more than I knew him. Teammates liked him, coaches liked and respected him. Outsiders, there wasn't a whole lot of room in that tight a circle. But what you needed to know, you saw. The relentlessness was tangible. The work ethic could not be missed. The dude sweat through his clothes before practice, his routine was so grueling. One time, he grabbed 20 rebounds in a Big Ten game, then was MIA for the post-game press conference because he went right to the StairMaster. He was a great student who earned a degree in three years.
Anyway, I'm not going to sit here and pretend like I knew Swanigan all that well, beyond the story I spent a few years chronicling.
What I can tell you is that Caleb Swanigan was a comet, burning through the basketball world, a reminder of the endlessness of possible even for those born into impossible. You know the story: Raised on the run, to a life ravaged by drugs and poverty. Swanigan's rescue from that life, and the extent to which he made good on it, made him an embodiment of most any kid of those circumstances' wildest dreams.
We marveled at Swanigan, at the nature of this ascendance and the beacon of hope he became, but also just hoped like hell that it would endure, that this transformation would stand the test of time.
Try as some of us might to detach from our pasts and put them behind us, they are part of us. We are all rooted in our upbringings. It can be inescapable. The challenges Caleb Swanigan was born into, that were running through his veins, they're difficult to just walk away from.
I remember wondering back when he was at Purdue whether Caleb Swanigan ever really had a chance to be a kid, to experience the things, to make the memories, and to make the mistakes, that shape people. I always wonder what it means for people who have had to grow up too quick, for one reason or another, and in Swanigan's case, he had a bunch.
Caleb Swanigan's story centers around his physical state, the metamorphosis he worked to achieve under Roosevelt Barnes' care.
But Tuesday's news — Swanigan died in Fort Wayne last night — reminds of the universal importance of our mental well-being.
Since Swanigan's NBA career ended quickly and decisively, he'd become estranged from those who'd helped him along. He fell back into old habits, losing control of his weight, putting him in the dire health straits that ultimately took him. Drugs had become part of his life. Who knows what sort of counterproductive influences replaced those from his time in the spotlight.
This is a mental health story, the phone call that so many people who knew Swanigan and loved Swanigan dreaded.
This was like a movie.
Not only in the arc of the story, but also the fact that there was always someone else present below the surface of the main character.
"Biggie" was an unbelievable story.
Caleb Swanigan, as he was born, became a tragic one.
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