Oh, but the headlines ever so carefully conceal the circumstances.  (URR here.)

"Pelicans’ rookie guard Bryce Dejean-Jones has died at age 23" (NBC.com)

"NBA player Bryce Dejean-Jones fatally shot" (CNN)

Why, the headlines might make you think that GUNS are the problem, or that the guard's death was some sort of sudden and tragic illness.  But the actual circumstances are quite unflattering.  

(From ESPN:)

According to Dallas police, officers responded to a call about a shooting at an apartment at about 3:20 a.m. Saturday morning. The resident of the apartment said an individual had kicked open his front door and entered his apartment. The resident, who had been asleep, retrieved a handgun and called out to the individual, but did not receive an answer. The individual kicked the bedroom door and the resident fired his gun at the individual, who left the apartment and collapsed in the breezeway. The individual was transported to the hospital, where he died.

Some have claimed that Dejean-Jones went to the wrong floor of the apartment building where his girlfriend (one assumes), who is the mother of his child, lives.  They had previously had an argument, the story goes.  As if that makes his actions any less abhorrent.  Even if the story is true, one can only wonder what would have transpired between that woman and a six-foot five-inch, 210 pound professional athlete who was enraged enough to kick down two doors to get to her.   At three in the morning.  Wonder what the tox screen will turn up.

But none of this one would even begin to glean from the headlines.  No, this was a situation of Bryce Dejean-Jones' own making.  Entirely.  While thoughts and prayers are appropriate for the young man's family, they are also appropriate for the poor man who knows he took another man's life, because he felt, rightly, that his own was threatened.  Not something anyone ever wants to do, but Dejean-Jones gave the man no choice.   It is something that man will live with for the rest of his days.

At 23, this young athlete did not deserve to die.  But he certainly exponentially increased his chances of doing so by kicking in two doors in another man's domicile.  Gleaning nothing from a drug-possession arrest in college, instead Dejean-Jones learned the hard way that the adulation and fame that comes with the talent to earn an NBA paycheck doesn't make you immortal.