There are three (count ‘em, three!) basketball-related stories on Curmie’s radar at the moment, none of them, of course, really about basketball. They’re really more about ethics and the problems with viewing sports in general as a positive force in society.
Obviously, there are advantages to sports: the athletes are of necessity in better physical shape (apart from sports-related injuries, of course) than they’d otherwise be. Team sports—even those which feature individual performances, like high school or college competitions in tennis or swimming—build an understanding of goals greater than personal aggrandizement: most of those players who say they’d rather be on a championship team than to be the MVP are actually telling the truth. And the lessons extend past teamwork to include worth ethic, discipline, etc.
But there’s also a downside which comes into play in various ways—sometimes when the identification with the team becomes so great that it warps ethical values, sometimes when the allure of personal notoriety dwarfs them.
We start with what appears to be a manifestation of the former. In far northwestern Vermont, a brawl broke out at a middle-school basketball game between 13- and 14-year-old boys from St. Albans and Alburgh. There is a little cell phone footage of the incident, showing that the scuffle, largely if not exclusively among adults, by the way, spilled onto the court while players from both teams stayed out of the altercation.
Such episodes are infrequent but not unheard of: there was a good-sized altercation after a wrestling match at Curmie’s high school, for example, and a few years later someone got stabbed for cheering for the wrong team at a high school basketball game in the small town where Curmie lived at the time. There are, no doubt, dozens if not hundreds of such occurrences every year.
What makes this story different is that someone died, apparently (although the investigation is not yet concluded) from injuries sustained in that brouhaha. There’s one headline that identifies the victim, Russell Giroux, as a “dad,” but neither the accompanying article nor any other Curmie can find supports that claim, so proceed with that assumption at your own risk, Gentle Reader… especially since that same headline says he died “at” the game; he died in the hospital after summoning emergency workers at some point on his way home.
At this point, it’s a reasonable guess that injuries sustained in the punch-up contributed to Giroux’s demise, but that’s still speculative. What isn’t apparently, is that he was indeed a participant in the melee. What started it all is still not clear: it’s certainly possible that the brawl had nothing to do with the game at all, but it’s certainly a possibility that something in the contest, or something that someone in the stands said about its participants, triggered the incident. So the only thing we’re sure of is that crowds intensify The Stupid.
Story #2: Duke women’s basketball coach Kara Lawson is claiming that the first half of their game at Florida State last Sunday was played with the wrong size ball. Lawson believes the half was played with the ball used in the men’s game; the ball used in the women’s game is two ounces lighter and an inch smaller in circumference. Both teams shot well off their season averages in the first half and much better in the second half: a statistic which, of course, could be either telling or simple coincidental.
The error, assuming there was one, is significant in part because, if Lawson is correct, Florida State’s win in that game is tainted: the home team provides the balls, so the fact that the ball wasn’t kosher is on them. Plus, the two teams are battling for position in the Atlantic Coast Conference (ACC), and the Seminoles’ win could affect seed lines for the conference and/or NCAA tournaments.
Lawson claims her players were complaining about the ball throughout the first half, and that the officials finally noticed the error and changed to the right ball at halftime. She attempted to appeal, but the ACC denied her request, pointing to a rule that players (players? not officials?) must confirm the correct ball size before tipoff, and claiming that “following the thorough and objective review process, there was no evidence found to support the claim.”
One thing is certain: somebody is lying. Whether it’s Lawson, the officials, or the ACC is unclear, but Curmie’s money is on the conference, mostly because of this part of their statement: “The conference continues to prioritize and support our nearly 10,000 student-athletes in a world-class manner and conduct its 27 sponsored sports with the utmost integrity.” When you start saying irrelevant stuff, especially if it’s self-congratulatory, the chances are really good you’re ducking responsibility for something. Or, as generations of Curmie’s students have heard him say innumerable times, “if you have to tell me, it ain’t so.”
By the way, a similar phenomenon happened a while back, when the College of Charleston was docked two wins in terms of seeding for the Colonial Athletic Conference tournament for using “improperly sized” balls in two conference games in January of 2017.
But the winner of the WTF Sweepstakes has to be one Arlisha Boykins. She was an assistant coach for the Churchland High School girls’ JV basketball team in Portsmouth, Virginia. One of the team’s players was out of town playing in a club tournament, and the 22-year-old Boykin impersonated her, playing under her name, using her uniform, and taking the floor in a game against Nansemond River. Boykins was playing with and against girls no older than 15.
Apparently everybody associated with the team except the girl whose identity was stolen is culpable. Boykins was fired; so was the JV head coach, who had to be in on the deception, and the varsity coach, who was reportedly “encouraging the behavior” during the game. Of course, the other girls on the team had to have known what was going on. They can be forgiven, perhaps, for fearing to come forward about what was happening, but there are a lot of adults who had to have feigned ignorance. It took the parents of the girl who wasn’t at the game to point out the emperor’s déshabillément.
That girl, by the way, has transferred to another school, where, presumably, she’ll be able to play ball for the rest of the season. Churchland’s season is over; whether this was indeed a decision by the players, as has been reported, or a decision imposed by the administration, which has decided to do its job for a change (who hired those coaches, after all?) is not clear, but failure to do the right thing can have consequences.
We close with a quote from one of the few actual adults in this piece, the father of the girl who place was taken by Boykins: “Coaches always preach to the kids about integrity and those types of things, so I was just shocked.” Curmie was young and naïve once, too…
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