The High Court

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Forde Daze and Forde Slights

As I was looking through the bio for ESPN.com senior writer Pat Forde, I kept looking for mention of Forde’s experience as a college basketball coach.  Shockingly, I could find no such mention.  And it is truly shocking, because given Forde’s July 11 column regarding Randolph Morris’ return to Lexington with the blessing of Tubby Smith, you would be certain that the man had years of experience running a Division I basketball program.  Forde (a talented writer, I will give him that), acting as the high authority on all things related to college athletics, has obviously decided (and implied) that Coach Smith is willing to sell the collective soul of his basketball program to try and win a national championship.  My suggestion to Mr. Forde would be to stick to writing, because as an evaluator of character, he is a complete and total failure. 

 

Ah, how Forde must have giggled to himself as he compared Morris (“The Runaway Center”) and Smith (the abandoned coach) to Jennifer Wilbanks (“The Runaway Bride”) and John Mason (the pathetic groom-to-be).  Well, that is really clever, Pat.  Where things go seriously awry is the point at which Forde suggests that Smith is a sucker, and perhaps worse, suggests he is a man willing to ignore his every principle to pursue a national title.  Going further, Forde suggests that Smith may have lost his ‘05-’06 Wildcats in the middle of July because of his willingness to give Morris a break. 

 

I think we all can agree that Randolph Morris took stupidity to new heights this spring (although he certainly had plenty of company in the idiot boat…hello, Matt Walsh) with his decision to stay in the NBA draft.  I think we can all agree that Morris took disloyal behavior to a new low by refusing to speak personally with Coach Smith.  And we should (although we certainly won’t) all be able to agree that young men deserve a second chance when they make a foolish mistake.  You ever do something dumb growing up?  Me, too.  It seems we males have at least a smidgen of poor judgment embedded in our genetic code.  Thank goodness for mentors like Tubby Smith willing to help guide us down the right path.  And besides, what are we talking about here, anyway?  Did Morris use drugs?  Sell drugs?  Beat somebody up?  Steal something?  Uh, no.  He pursued his desire to play professional basketball.  Quick, somebody call SWAT.  We have a dangerous felon on our hands here…

 

See, isn’t this much ado about nothing?  We are talking about a guy that averaged fewer than nine points and barely four rebounds a night last season.  IF he gets better, he MIGHT help UK pursue that national championship.  If he doesn’t, well, you had to put up with him stinking up the gym last year.  So you are already used to it.  No big deal.  But the young man deserves a chance to get his head and his game straightened out.  And guess what, folks…helping him do that is exactly the job description of a head coach.

 

Forde and another colunmist, Gregg Doyel (see The Powdered Wig for more on Doyel) both chose to use Morris’ return to school to suggest that talented players in Smith’s program receive greater tolerance than they should from the top ‘Cat.  Forde does give Smith credit for his patience with his players, sort of, but even then it comes off as a backhanded compliment.  Forde mentions Smith staying quiet when Jamaal Magliore, Tayshaun Prince, and Keith Bogans all tested early entry into the NBA draft.  Forde makes the vaguest of implications that perhaps Tubby’s reasons for doing so revolved around those players’ ability to return and help the program at Kentucky.  All three did return, and all three helped their standing with the NBA.  Forde does fairly recognize that the players benefited from Smith’s patience, but I think he misses the point.  Tubby’s willingness to allow them to return certainly benefited the players far more than it benefited the program.  I think we can fairly assume that Kentucky basketball would have survived without all of them returning for their final seasons.

 

Forde mentions the failed Jason Parker experiment, basically telling us that it was Mitch Barnhart, not Tubby, responsible for finally showing Parker the door (Oddly, I didn’t see a quote from Barnhart in Forde’s column confirming the fact).  Forde even states that Smith allowed Parker more missteps than other college coaches would have.  Who are these coaches?  Do we get any names, Patsy?  None (Insert your own eye-rolling)? He also mentions Gerald Fitch getting up to four chances from Tubby to get on the straight and narrow.  Strangely, Forde forgot to mention Antowain Barbour’s trip to the police blotter.  And of course we get a mention of Joe Crawford’s brief desertion last year, as well as the time Rajon Rondo was spotted crossing the street without looking both ways…

 

All along you have this feeling that Forde is telling you that if a player can help Smith, he will look the other way.  What he fails to do is bring up any scrubs that have been particularly mistreated because of their transgressions.  He also fails to remind you of Rashaad Carruth, a supremely talented shooting guard who arrived in Lexington with the same press clippings as Joe Crawford and was promptly shown the door when he failed to live up to Tubby’s expectations of how a student athlete should behave.  What Forde is doing, whether he will admit it or not, is accusing Tubby Smith of prostituting his own principles in order to win at the highest level.  And that accusation is borderline criminal.  Worse still is the headline of Forde’s piece (which he may or may not be responsible for…we may have the geniuses at ESPN.com to thank for that one) “Morris is making a mockery of Kentucky program”.  A mockery?  Since when is giving a kid a chance to atone for bad judgment a bad thing?

 

Morris certainly isn’t guilty of some of the legal transgressions of some UK players in recent years (Barbour, Erik Daniels, and Fitch to name three), but what Forde doesn’t discuss while acting like Smith gave all these guys a free pass just because they could help him win, is that all of the offending parties served suspensions.  All of them were publicly disciplined and reprimanded, and you should keep in mind that the public discipline was probably much more pleasant than what Tubby handed out behind closed doors.  It isn’t a stretch to imagine that there were lots of “Breakfast with Tubby” sessions at 6:00 a.m. that left the guilty parties wishing they had been sent home instead of experiencing Coach Smith’s tough love.  But Tubby knows that you don’t throw young men out, not when there is a chance you can put them on the right road, perhaps all the way to getting a degree.

 

I wonder, what would Forde do in Tubby Smith’s shoes (I can see the mad dash for WWFD bracelets now)?  If it was Forde in charge of the well-being of 12 to 15 young men each year, would things be as simple as they are up on Mount Keyboard?  Has Forde ever sat in the office and talked to a young man about the loss of a loved one?  About troubles with a girlfriend?  Problems in school?  Homesickness?  Has he ever had to deal with young men from impoverished backgrounds, young men who may never have known one or both of their parents?  Well, how about it Pat?  Have you?

 

I am a former college athlete, and I can tell you firsthand that my coaches over the years have been some of the most important people in my life.  Sometimes the experiences with those coaches were tremendous, sometimes things were not so wonderful.  But I learned a great deal from the men I played for, and whether they knew it or not, they played a very large role in shaping the adult I have become.  I can tell you that I would have been proud and honored to have played for Tubby Smith.  I have a young son, and I would not hesitate for a second to send him to play for Tubby Smith.  I have that much faith in the man’s character, and I have never met him.  But the compassion and understanding that he has shown each and every one of his players, shows me that Tubby Smith is about improving the lives of the young men he coaches, and not about the blind pursuit of national championships.  Forde acts as if Smith is motivated by the pressure of being at Kentucky, the pressure of keeping his job.  I say Smith pursues the national title because he is a winner and a fierce competitor.  He is the same coach now that he was at Tulsa and Georgia, and it isn’t as if he would have to beg for work if he didn’t have the job at Kentucky.  The man can flat-out coach.

 

The whole episode leads me to wonder… why grind the axe with Tubby Smith?  Randolph Morris is the bonehead here, after all (in fact he made multiple contempt lists here at The High Court for his actions).  Well...Forde is a former Louisville Courier-Journal writer who seems to have a crush on Rick Pitino…maybe that’s the motivation.  More likely, Forde, like many of his brethren in the media, may have issues with Smith because he does not grant full access either to himself or his players the year round.  I guess those guys just don’t know how to handle a guy who sticks to his principles.

 

All I can tell you is that Tubby Smith has been a basketball coach for more than three decades going back to his days as a high school basketball coach.  He has raised three sons, and he and his wife, Donna, through the Tubby Smith foundation have helped raise $1.5 million to aid underprivileged children.  I believe that if Coach Smith is guilty of anything, it is caring too much about his players.  So to paraphrase a classic line from the movie “The American President”, Pat Forde, if you want to have a character contest, you better stick to me.  Because Tubby Smith is way out of your league.

 

 

 

 

Contact The Chief at chiefjustice@thehighcourtofsports.com

Tough and demanding on the basketball floor, Tubby Smith has shown himself capable of great compassion  when his players need him most.

(espn.com)