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12/02/2024 | News release | Distributed by Public on 12/03/2024 05:13

Former NBA Player a Speaker at BU’s Center for Stuttering Therapy Event

Former NBA Player a Speaker at BU's Center for Stuttering Therapy Event

During a visit to BU November 25, former NBA player Michael Kidd-Gilchrist spoke to Sargent College students and members of the local stuttering community about his stutter and about starting a nonprofit, called Change & Impact, to advocate for the stuttering community.

Health & Medicine

Former NBA Player a Speaker at BU's Center for Stuttering Therapy Event

Michael Kidd-Gilchrist shared his personal story of living with a stutter, and his advocacy work

December 2, 2024
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"I am a proud person who stutters, and any chance I get to help and to educate, I'm always down for it," retired NBA player Michael Kidd-Gilchrist said during a visit to BU last week.

Living with a stutter is "pretty hard, pretty challenging, but I wouldn't change it for the world now," said Kidd-Gilchrist. He came to Sargent College of Health & Rehabilitation Sciences to share his story with speech-language pathology students and members of the stuttering community at an event organized by Sargent's Center for Stuttering Therapy at Boston University.

Kidd-Gilchrist said he suffered shame and stress for many years over stuttering and didn't truly confront the issue until he retired in 2020. Now 31, he takes every opportunity to speak out on behalf of people who stutter as the founder of Change & Impact, a nonprofit that advocates for better understanding-and improved insurance coverage-for those people.

"I've got days when I'm tired, emotionally and physically, and I know for a fact it's going to be a bad day for me talking," he said at the event, held at Questrom School of Business, his second time speaking at BU. "But I'm never going to give up on it."

Former NBA player Kidd-Gilchrist (left) chatting with Scott Tashjian after Kidd-Gilchrist spoke at the Questrom School of Business.

"Michael has a really wonderful way of making everyone he talks to feel heard and feel valued," says Caroline Brinkert (Sargent'12), a Sargent College lecturer and director of the Center for Stuttering Therapy. "He even joked that it's 'impossible to be arrogant' as a stutterer, and I really see the truth in that. In my experience, people who stutter are extraordinary listeners. I'm so excited about the work he is doing and how he has pushed his personal comfort zones to use his voice to make others listen and effect change."

Kidd-Gilchrist was a star on his New Jersey high school team and on the 2012 University of Kentucky NCAA championship team before playing seven seasons in the NBA for the Charlotte Hornets, and briefly, for the Dallas Mavericks. But he stuttered and "blocked"-when the words just won't come out-all his life and got little to no help in school.

At Kentucky he finally began seeing a speech language pathologist and learning ways to push back against his stutter, but he turned pro after just a year, and neither the NBA nor his teams offered any help, he said. "I didn't ask for it, either," he noted. His teammates were respectful, but it just wasn't something they talked about. And so the interviews and press conferences he had to deal with as a NBA player became a major source of stress and something to avoid.

"It was pretty hard, it was challenging," he said, "People sticking [mics] in your face, and social media at that time."

But the basketball court was one place where the stutter wasn't a problem, Kidd-Gilchrist said during a Q and A session at the end of the event. Dan Shapiro, a NESN videographer and editor who participates in programs at the center, said he has played basketball all his life and found that he communicates effectively on the court without stuttering. He asked if it was the same for Kidd-Gilchrist, who nodded emphatically.

BU's Center for Stuttering Therapy organized the appearance by Kidd-Gilchrist, who spoke about his advocacy work in support of legislation to remove insurance barriers to accessing speech-language therapy for stuttering.

"I don't stutter on the court," Kidd-Gilchrist said. "I don't even think about that stuff then. I don't stutter when I'm playing basketball, when I pray, when I'm having some wine, or when I sing." Why? "I don't know."

It was post-NBA that he really focused on making a change, with the help of his family, friends, and support system, including a speech language pathologist, like several of the students in the room plan to become.

"I have a wife, and I have kids, and I guess I wanted them to see me face all my fears," he said. "That's a real good feeling."

Even now, he has to work through blocks and repetitions. "I have something that I wasn't always proud of, and for me to see my personal growth as an individual, I can feel that I'm not embarrassed anymore," he said. "I don't care if I stutter over and over again."

Others asked how they can support his work lobbying for legislation. His goals include improved insurance coverage for stuttering treatment, more funding for research, and a standardized definition of stuttering that will make those and other goals easier to obtain.

Recently Kentucky passed a piece of insurance legislation he calls "a home run," expanding coverage for treatment; Pennsylvania passed a similar piece of legislation, but only for children aged two to six. Efforts are now afoot in California, New Jersey, Massachusetts, and several other states, and Kidd-Gilchrist's visit to Boston included face time with some legislators.

Living with a stutter is hard, and so is facing it, but he wouldn't change any of his story, he said, "because I can make a difference in people's lives."

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  • Joel Brown

    Staff Writer

    Joel Brown is a staff writer at BU Today and Bostonia magazine. He's written more than 700 stories for the Boston Globe and has also written for the Boston Herald and the Greenfield Recorder. Profile

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