Aron Baynes breaks silence on career-ending fall and devastating mental toll
Aussie NBA player Aron Baynes competed in the Olympics but then lost everything in a matter of seconds. For the first time, he speaks about his devastating injury and the mental toll it had on him.
For most of his life, Aron Baynes measured his worth in numbers: points, rebounds, contracts, the digits on the back of his jersey.
He was the Aussie big man who went from Mareeba to the NBA, who stood shoulder to shoulder with the game’s greats, and who helped deliver Australia its first men’s basketball Olympic medal. Then, in a split second in Tokyo, it was all gone. During the 2021 Olympics, Baynes suffered a freak accident in the team’s bathroom area between games, a fall that would change his life forever.
The injury left him with nerve damage and partial paralysis. Doctors told him he might never walk again. At 34, the career he had spent decades building, the one that defined him, was suddenly ripped away. Today, at 38, Baynes speaks for the first time about the injury that ended his NBA career, the mental fallout that followed and the pain of navigating a separation from his wife while rebuilding himself as a father, a man and now, wellness advocate.
“It’s hard to pick a starting point as to where the journey began for me,” he tells Sydney Weekend.
“My whole career, everything was external.
I didn’t really feel that or understand that until, after the injury, after rehab and after a whole bunch of stuff in life.”
Before the fall, Baynes’ world made perfect sense: his value was visible, measurable, the salary figure on a contract, the stats on a board, the roar of a crowd.
“I’d walk into a GM’s office, and I would see my name there next to a dollarsign with other guys’ names in the same price bracket,” he says.
“So that was how I justified what I was, who
I was. It was kind of external validation on what I meant to the world and what I meant to my family. That was how I’d supported my family, was through the dollar amount.”
That pursuit of validation fuelled his success, but when it was stripped away, the foundation cracked.
“When I got hurt and everything was taken away, that was pretty hard. Things had started declining in terms of my mental health. Before that, I didn’t really think about it at that point. I was able to just compartmentalise very well. But once I got hurt, what I did was taken from me.”
He lost his contract. He couldn’t walk. He couldn’t sign another deal because, quite literally, he couldn’t move.
“You know, going through free agency in a hospital bed … the doctors telling you they don’t know if you’ll walk again. They don’t know what you’ll be able to do with the left side of your body again. It was a big grey area.”
In the Japanese hospital, Baynes worked with a physio who could barely communicate with him.
“He’d move my arm and my leg for me,” he recalls.
“And then a week and a half into it, he had been trying to get me to stack cups and different things. I managed to do one cup on another cup by myself. And I was excited to call my wife. I called her up, and then she put the phone down in front of our six-month-old, who was stacking blocks. I just hung up, because I wasn’t able to physically do what a six-month-old was doing.”
That moment broke him.
“It was probably over a year after I got hurt that I realised how bad a spot I was in mentally,” Baynes says.
“They told me I possibly wouldn’t walk again. I probably wouldn’t play basketball again. And I was like, ‘I’ll prove them wrong.’”
The fight to recover gave him something to cling to, but it also masked deeper pain.
“It wasn’t healthy, but it was what I’d gone through,” he says.
“And now, looking back, I’m thankful for everything, because without those catalysts, I wouldn’t be where I am now.”
He believes now that the injury forced him to evolve beyond the court.
“If I hadn’t been hurt, I probably would still be seeking external validation, instead of being able to find the internal validation that I find nowadays in myself and in my life and the purposes I have and the values I have.”
As confronting as it was, he now calls that accident a turning point.
“Getting hurt sucked,” he says.
“But it was a good catalyst for me to do the work on the mental health side and understand who I am and what I am.”
A new kind of pain
In the years since his recovery, Baynes has faced another kind of loss, the end of his marriage. The separation, he says, has been one of the hardest emotional battles of his life.
“Going through separation … I have my kids week on, week off. So when
I have them, everything’s off the plate. They’re 10, seven and four. They’re depending on me.
“So right now, while they’re dependent on me to do those basic necessities for life, then I’ll clear my plate every single time I do have them.”
His kids have become his anchor.
“Being a dad is the greatest purpose I have. It’s the most fun I have,” he says.
“I’ve decided over the last while, doing a lot of inner child work. And so for me, as much as I’ve got a lot of healing to do when I’m with them,
I know I’m doing that healing for myself, and hopefully I’m not imparting any hurt on their inner child.”
The weight of grief
Baynes says the emotional toll of the separation was physical. “There’s a physical pain in your heart breaking, taking Panadol actually does help,” he says.
“It’s one of those things. It was a lot of trying to figure out things and find my feet when that world completely changed for me. I grieve for myself. My kids still grieve. I still grieve with them for what they won’t have in terms of the family.
“But I know for myself, what I’ve done is found so much more love in myself that is so much more abundant for them. Going through it, your whole world rocks. I’m a big believer in your moral compass gets shaken every time you grieve.”
These days, Baynes is doing the hard emotional work, while focusing on resentment with his therapist to be “better” for his children.
“I don’t want them to ever feel the resentment that I have or that I’d had, because it’s half of them. I don’t want them to feel like I dislike half of them, because I love them wholly. I want them to find what they enjoy and is purposeful to them. If they have their own beliefs and values that they put in the forefront of their decisions, then I’ve done the right thing as a father.”
Life after the NBA
The truth is, Baynes could still play. His body has recovered, he is strong, fit and competitive as ever. But for now, basketball has taken a back seat to life.
“I do some stuff in construction, working with my best mate,” he says.
“I like getting my hands dirty, seeing what I’ve done at the end of the day. There’s a lot of purpose in that.”
He has also been commentating and mentoring younger players through the NBL. Now, Baynes is channelling that awareness into something new, a collaboration with Australian wellness brand KAILO Wellness to launch
KN +12 Live Well, a first-of-its-kind product designed to support physical performance and cognitive health. The name is a nod to his jersey number, No.12, the number he wore proudly for Australia.
“These were the ingredients I swore by through the highs and lows of my career,” Baynes says.
The partnership grew organically after he gave a keynote speech at KAILO’s wellness summit with goop earlier this year. Formulated with fava bean protein, collagen, creatine, probiotics, magnesium and urolithin A, KN +12 is designed to boost energy, support cognition and recovery and promote long-term vitality, the kind of mind-body balance Baynes had to rediscover the hard way.
After everything, Baynes has learned that being broken open can sometimes be the only way to grow.
“I’m thankful for everything. Because without those catalysts, I wouldn’t be where
I am now.”
Originally published as Aron Baynes breaks silence on career-ending fall and devastating mental toll
