Minnesota's Royce White blasts NBA in new HBO interview

^{Star Tribune photo by Renee Jones Schneider}

Minnesotan Royce White, who dazzled at DeLaSalle and Hopkins high schools as a teenager, continues to press the NBA in a new interview with HBO's "Real Sports With Bryant Gumbel."

White, who was temporarily a member of the Minnesota Gophers before transferring to Iowa State University, was first featured on the Emmy-winning series in 2013, shortly after he had butted heads with the Houston Rockets, which had selected him as the No. 12 pick in the 2012 draft.

White was insisting that the team, and the NBA, address his mental-health issues. Since that broadcast, White bounced around the NBA and was eventually signed by the London Lightning in Canada, where he was the league's MVP last year.

Bernie Goldberg, who filed the original report, follows up with roughly five minutes of fresh material in which White addresses how the NBA took mental-health issues more seriously when they were brought up by Kevin Love and DeMar DeRozan.

In a somewhat defiant sitdown, White bristles at the notion that those two stars are being treated as groundbreakers when he was pointing out the need to take anxiety attacks more seriously years earlier. At one point, he appears to compare himself to Jesus Christ.

The 15-minute segment premieres at 9 p.m. Tuesday on HBO but you can catch a sneak peek here: