SI: O.J. Mayo says he 'owes' Bucks; dreams of another chance

O.J. Mayo, who played three seasons with the Milwaukee Bucks from 2013-'16, has spent the past year largely out of the public eye. His disappearance came after he received a two-year ban on July 1, 2016, for violating the terms of the NBA's anti-drug program.

According to a story by Sports Illustrated's Ben Golliver published Monday, Mayo, 29, has spent most of the past 13 months away from basketball, turning his life around with an eye on saving his NBA career — one that began with incredible promise as the No. 3 overall pick in the 2008 draft.

When the time comes to apply for reinstatement to the NBA on July 1, 2018, Mayo will be an unrestricted free agent and he dreams of rejoining the Bucks.

He told Sports Illustrated that "he hadn’t acted professionally enough to deserve a spot in the NBA, and he thanked Milwaukee coach Jason Kidd, GM John Hammond (now with Orlando), and owners Marc Lasry and Wes Edens for doing 'everything in the world to help me,' " during his time with the Bucks.

“I want to go back to what I left (in Milwaukee),” Mayo told Sports Illustrated, when asked for his dream destination. “I was real close with Jason Kidd. That was the best relationship I had with a coach besides (Dwaine Barnes). I had great relationships with Giannis (Antetokounmpo) and Khris Middleton. I was comfortable there. I felt like I let them down, cheated them for two years. They paid me $8 million to be, in my eyes, a subpar player. They invested millions of dollars for me to be on top of my s---, and when you’re not on top of your s---, it shows. I’ll be 30 next summer. If they just give me the chance, I can make it up. I owe them.”

The story also includes Mayo's acknowledgment that his ban was due to smoking marijuana and abusing a prescription pain medication because it is on the NBA’s “drugs of abuse” list. Considering he was recovering from a broken right ankle last summer and wasn't cleared by FIBA to play internationally until November 2016, Mayo decided to take the 2016-'17 season off from basketball to fully rehabilitate his ankle and “get his stuff together.”

“Taking the game away is probably the closest thing to jail that I’ll get to,” Mayo told Sports Illustrated. “Since I was like 6 or 7, I’ve always had a basketball season. That was the lowest point in my entire life: The shellshock of not being in the NBA. All my peers are playing and I’m not because of boneheaded mistakes. Take the ball away, what is there to do?”

Mayo spent that time traveling the world and refocusing on what he would need to do in order to take steps towards returning to basketball. Earlier this year, he tried to get himself back into basketball shape, but wasn't making much progress on his own before ultimately finding a workout group this June that gave him the opportunity to join if he was willing to abide by a zero-tolerance approach to the regimen.

The full story, which includes further details about Mayo's time away from the NBA and his road back, can be found here.