This is not the Eddie Griffin he knew.

This is not the young man he coached at Roman Catholic High School, the one with so much potential as a basketball player and a person.

"He seems to be a very different person now," says Seddon, in his 22nd season of coaching at Roman Catholic. "I've seen pictures of him and had to do a double take because I didn't recognize him.

"He had that scowl on his face and was trying to look all hard. That was not the Eddie I knew."

Griffin, only 24, is near rock bottom these days.

The promising future that he should be realizing is instead crumbling around him.

Griffin, who was selected seventh overall in the 2001 NBA draft, hasn't played a game for the Minnesota Timberwolves since Dec. 13.

Before Griffin completed his

recent five-game drug-test suspension, Minnesota owner Glen Taylor had all but said the troubled forward never would play another game for the Wolves.

The word out of Minnesota is that the Timberwolves are trying to find a way to terminate the rest of the 3-year, $8.1 million contract Griffin signed before the start of the 2005-06 season or reach a buyout agreement.

Like the New Jersey Nets and Houston Rockets before them, the Wolves simply decided that trying to tap into Griffin's potential is no longer worth the baggage of dealing with his alcoholism and other personal issues.

Griffin's last alcohol-related drama was on March 30, 2006.

He was involved in a car crash that witnesses claimed was caused because he was watching a pornographic DVD and masturbating while driving.

Although the accident report does not indicate that police at the scene required Griffin to

submit to a Breathalyzer test, Griffin was reportedly recorded on the security camera of a convenience store saying he was drunk and did not have a driver's license.

He also was recorded as pleading with the man whose SUV he hit to not call the police. He allegedly offered to buy the man a new car if he would keep the

police out of the matter.

Seddon doesn't know what to make of Griffin's fall from grace. He just knows it saddens him.

"I never thought it would come to this," Seddon says of Griffin, a player some said was the best big man to come out of a Philadelphia high school since Wilt Chamberlain. "When he was at Roman Catholic, he was a