SI's takedown of UCLA

Easy now. That is one of the best examples of coaching I have ever heard.

 

George Dohrmann is the Mike Wallace of sports journalism. Really not a guy you want to hear is holding on line 1. That said, the fact that I don't believe lawyers will need to be summoned should have them doing cartwheels in Westwood.

 

I thought the most interesting element of the story wasn't any gotcha revelation about drugs, cursing, et cetera, but how it seems that Howland's backing/indulging of a player who was practice bully to several of his teammates caused those other players to transfer, and those players blossomed elsewhere. and then howland ends up dismissing the bully from the program, but it's too late. howland mismanaged a difficult personality set a program back years, and this story showed exactly how.

not sure i've read anything quite like that before.

 

Merely pointing out what coaching "idiosyncracies" sound like when taken out of context.

 

uhhhh Reeves Nelson, according to the story, injured three teammates during practices, intentionally, so that they missed games. That's not normal behavior.

 

Reeves Nelson's lawyer demands a retraction:

http://deadspin.com/5889516/

 

I sure hope Reeves isn't paying by the hour for that silliness.

 

If SI's going to retract anything, I'm sure they'd like to retract this:

 

Little Debbie's.

And they better goddamn be the preferred variety, too.

 

To me, the most damning part of the story is the disconnect between Howland and his team. The fact that he doesn't seem to have a handle on what his players are doing or even put an effort into knowing that stuff speaks to the reason that program has dropped so dramatically in terms of performance. It would seem to me that it'd be pretty hard to recruit a kid to a program with a coach who can't look a parent in the eye and promise he's going to do everything he can to make sure that kid gets an education, learns to do things the right way and generally monitors the kid.

 

http://www.tmz.com/2012/05/23/reeves-nelson-ucla-basketball-sports-illustrated-defamation-lawsuit/

Lawyer says Nelson is suing SI for $10 million. The central claim is that the part about him peeing on a teammate's close is false.

 

Wouldn't it be interesting to learn one of our own -- another one -- knows how to play fast and loose with the "facts" when needed?