|
The Sports Blotter - by Matt
Taibbi
BLEEDING
GREEN
Early
September is traditionally a quiet month for football crime
— both college and pro players are generally too busy
watching game film to be driving pickup trucks into old folks'
homes, shooting people outside the local IHOP, throwing their
pregnant wives down flights of stairs, or indeed indulging
in any of those celebrated springtime recreations. In fact,
though no studies have been done to prove it, it seems likely
that the first two weeks of football season are the very safest
weeks of the year in the U.S. — there's probably never
a better time to accost a stripper in an Atlanta parking lot
than early September.
But
the NBA is a different story. September and early October
are traditionally the high-danger months for the NBA. These
are those slow months before the start of the regular season
when Allen Iverson throws a Newport News barbecue, when Qyntel
Woods buys a new dog, when Paul Pierce strolls into the Buzz
and asks a girl at Made Men's table to dance. Basketball has
a very long crime season — despite the long schedule,
there's far too much down time to really keep the players
out of trouble during any time except the playoffs —
but all the same the month before training camp will always
be the worst time, as players look to get their last partying
in before the two-a-days begin.
Last
year at this time, Gary Payton was being arraigned for a DUI,
while journeyman Rodney White was becoming the first NBA player
to be arrested by a Secret Service agent after the latter
spotted White shooting randomly into the air, Wild-West style,
in a Washington, DC ghetto.
This
year, yet another NBA player fell into the trap of staying
out past his bedtime in a gun-rich landscape. The culprit
in this case was Tony Allen, the second-year player for the
Boston Celtics, who last week was described as a "person
of interest" in the Chicago-area shooting of a loudmouth
named Marktwain Johnson.
Allen
is one of a large class of Celtics youngsters who make up
perhaps the most dynamic young roster in the league. The Danny
Ainge youth movement up in Boston has mostly been hailed around
the league as a smashing success, with the on-court performance
of players like Allen, Delonte West, Al Jefferson and Kendrick
Perkins leaving many observers to speculate that the Celtics
will once again be a powerhouse team sometime later in this
decade. However, there have been indications throughout that
Ainge's Green Teen plan has been a lot more problematic behind
the scenes than has been revealed publicly. At the conclusion
of last season, Ainge and coach Doc Rivers vowed to institute
a new "code of conduct" for the team, with Ainge
going so far as to say the team needed to learn how to, among
other things, "respect ball boys [and] respect airline
pilots." Ainge's public statements on the subject of
team behavior conjures images of off-court Celtics doing whip-its
in charter aircraft and giving late-night wedgies to TSA personnel
in rural FBOs after road losses... the team even went so far
as to propose a dress code, which suggests that high school
levels of incivility are a team concern.
Most
of this has remained under the surface, however, until now.
The Allen incident essentially involved a player staying out
too late and running with the wrong people. According to press
reports, Allen had a run-in some months ago with Johnson,
who is some kind of street figure in the South Side of Chicago.
At that run-in, the two men reportedly argued about how much
money Allen made. Fast forward a month or so: Allen shows
up at 3:30 a.m. at a party for former high school teammate
Will Bynum, who's just signed a contract to be a teammate
of Allen's on the Celtics. Johnson is there; Allen spots him,
and all hell breaks loose. According to Johnson's attorney,
Allen upon spotting Johnson pointed and said, "Fuck him
up!" Allen's attorney denies this, but in any case, at
the end of all of this, Johnson ends up being shot twice in
the left side and left arm. No one accuses Allen of being
the shooter, although one man claims Allen punched him and
broke his eye socket. Allen was reportedly seen running away
from the scene.
Police
immediately requested an interview with Allen, but the latter
declined. He will likely be picked up after the Celtics play
the Chicago Bulls in a preseason game on October 15. Whether
he will be arrested or charged remains to be seen. In the
meantime, stay tuned for more NBA news later this month. It's
almost inevitable...
ROCKER VIOLATED
It didn't involve an NBA player, but another basketball player
managed to work his way into the Blotter this week.
Jamaal Harris is less a sports figure than a figure from sportscrime
lore. He is one of those timeless figures whose name will
forever be linked to a bizarre sports arrest — like
Cody the police horse, the only police animal ever to be assaulted
by a major college basketball player (Cincinnati's Art Long),
or Mark Paul, the 300-pound flunky roommate of former New
England Patriot Kenyatta Jones, who became famous when Jones
threw bioling water on him as he sat on the toilet.
Harris,
a onetime Cleveland-area high school basketball legend, is
famous for being one of the two stick-up men in the bizarre
robbery of Cleveland Indians ace pitcher C.C. Sabathia. Harris
was originally arrested in 2002 after he and an accomplice
(former Ohio Mr. Basketball Damon Stringer) held up Sabathia
at gunpoint outside the WISH nightclub and robbed the giant
left-hander of a $60,000 Rolex, over $20,000 in platinum jewelry,
and some $3,000 in cash. Police described the incident as
a "crime of drunken opportunity," a phrase that
seems more to describe a sports marriage than a robbery. Whatever
the motive, it was certainly one of the weirder sports crimes
of all time— one celebrated athlete robbing another
at gunpoint.
In
any case, Harris was released this year, and appeared to have
his life back on track— he was slated to be the star
player of a new ABA franchise called the Lake Erie Rockers.
But he is back in jail again this week, after allegedly testing
positive for marijuana. According to news reports, Harris
submitted an "improperly diluted" urine sample,
and a judge will rule next week on whether or not Harris violated
his parole. Sabathia, in the middle of a pennant race, has
refused comment.
|
