Le Basketbawl

I have worn many hats during my professional lifetime. In many situations I have been the boss, the authority figure, the supervisor, the guy in charge. My beliefs when I have an employee, is what you do on your own time is your business, as long as it does not effect your performance during my time. But don’t you dare bring your baggage into the work place, leave it at home. When you work for me, you work for me. I don’t want you spending your day on the phone trying to hammer out a bad relationship. And I certainly don’t want you to show up impaired, either by drugs or by alcohol. And don’t even entertain the thought of bringing alcohol or drugs into the work place. If I catch you, you will be fired immediately.

I have always thought of drugs, as a victimless crime, unless you steal to pay for them, or get behind a wheel of a motor vehicle. But if you have the resources to pay for them, and you do it in the privacy of your own home, you can smoke drain cleaner as far as I am concerned. I would feel you are an imbecile, but to me that’s your right. But again there is a time and a place for everything, and the work place is not the time or the place for such behavior.

Now apparently former Kansas Jayhawks stars Mario Chalmers and Darrell Arthur did not have the same boundaries that I just described. According to “ESPN The Magazine” NBA beat writer Chris Broussard, the two former teammates found out the hard way that rules apply to everybody. Chalmers who is now a point guard with the Miami Heat, and Arthur a power forward with the Memphis Grizzlies, reportedly were sent home by Association officials, from the NBA Rookie Transition Program, after the two were caught with marijuana and women in their hotel room. Rookies are not allowed to have visitors during the program. Tim Frank speaking for the NBA verified the pair were sent home, however he did not specify the violations. Frank told reporters “The players were sent home for violating program rules. They will be appropriately sanctioned and will have to repeat the program next year.”

The Association would not confirm that the pair was fined, but sources have told Broussard that they were fine $20 thousand each. The pair who helped Kansas win a NCAA Title this Spring could start the season serving suspensions because of the incident. Now these two young men have nobody to blame for this situation but themselves. These are two bright young men that surely knew better than to try to pull a stunt like this. What could lead to this type of flouting of the rules? How about that these two young men felt above the rules and regulations set for mere mortals. They were entitled to behave how ever they wanted, because of their athletic prowess. That type of mindset does not develop over night, it happens over a lifetime. And for that we all are at least partially to blame.

If you went to public schools in the USA, you saw from a very early age, that athletically gifted boys got special treatment. It starts with your peers in the neighborhood, you are the first pick of every neighborhood game. As you get older it gets you preferential treatment with girls. And if you get high enough up the food chain eventually even authority figures allow you to slide by. How many scandals have we read about over the last few years, where a tutor confesses to writing a paper for an athlete? I have been told by reporters that have covered college sports for years, that the situations you end up hearing about, do not represent the tip of the iceberg, of what goes on at college campuses across the nation. And then we wonder why some athletes have inflated egos. I think the better question may be, how do the athletes that stay grounded and stay nice guys retain that attitude? How does a LeBron James come off as humble after games? (and he does.)

When you are young you think two things; that you know it all, and you are invulnerable. Combine that with the treatment that athletes get from our society, you have the makings of a monster on your hands. Now Mario Chalmers, and Darrell Arthur truly did something more stupid than anything else. This will not go down as an example of how to impress people in the NBA. How these two young men thought that they were going to go unchecked at an event under the auspices of the NBA, is just mind boggling! The Association tells you that you can have no guests at this event. I would think that is a clear warning sign that someone is going to check your room! So what do they do? They sneak in two young ladies, and start smoking weed, somebody of authority walks by, and either smells the pot, or hears female voices. Before you know it Mario and Darrell were heading home.

So are they bad guys? No, apparently they have some life lessons to learn, but there will be no long term damage from this one incident. The question now becomes did they learn anything from the experience? Such as we all have rules we have to follow, even the most talented athletes.