According to law enforcement officials, the best player on the No. 2-ranked team in college basketball transported the gun that was used to kill a 23-year old woman during an argument last month in Tuscaloosa, Alabama.
Regardless of the legal consequences for soon-to-be NBA lottery pick Brandon Miller — and it does not appear there will be any — that piece of information alone is the most troubling story in college basketball this year by a significant distance.
And yet for Alabama coach Nate Oats, it’s merely a speed bump on the way to the Final Four. Heck, it wasn’t even that. A sad situation, as he said at a news conference on Tuesday. The team even said a prayer about it before practice ended, which was certainly nice of them.
But was Miller’s involvement in this horrific tragedy something that needed to be dealt with in a way that might compromise a couple wins? Apparently not to Alabama athletics director Greg Byrne or Oats, who might have earned the title of America’s most tone-deaf person Tuesday with the following comment:
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“We knew about that. Can’t control everything everybody does outside of practice. Nobody knew that was going to happen. College kids are out. Brandon hasn’t been in any type of trouble, nor is he in any type of trouble in this case. Just in the wrong spot at the wrong time.”
Can’t control what everybody does? Wrong spot at the wrong time?
We’ll find out soon enough if Alabama can win a national championship in men’s basketball. But on the scale of insensitive things that have come out of coaches’ mouths when actual tragedy touches their program, Oats may have just given Art Briles a run for his money.
Oats later issued an apology for his “unfortunate remarks,” saying, “in no way did I intend to downplay the seriousness of the situation of the tragedy of that night.”
“We were informed by law enforcement of other student-athletes being in the vicinity, and law enforcement has repeatedly told us that no other student-athletes were suspects – they were witnesses only. Our understanding is that they have all been dully truthful and cooperative,” Oates added. “My statements came across poorly.”
The details of the case came out publicly Tuesday during a preliminary hearing for two men, Michael Davis and Darius Miles, who were charged in the killing of Jamea Jonas Harris on Jan. 15 after what appears to be a late-night argument that escalated into a shootout near Bryant-Denny Stadium. Davis and Miles have subsequently claimed they acted in self-defense.
This incident gained immediate national attention because Miles had been a member of the Alabama basketball team and had been ruled out of competition the day of the shooting because of an ankle injury.
As these things tend to play out, though, the shooting faded into the background. Alabama moved on and kept winning games. It didn’t appear there was going to be much more fallout for a team that has dominated the Southeastern Conference this season.
But then Tuesday’s hearing happened, and the weight of all this is suddenly inescapable.
Now we know that another player, point guard Jaden Bradley, was at the scene of the shooting. And we know, according to the detective working the case, that Miller’s car was hit by two bullets.
These are not things that were part of the narrative coming from Alabama in the wake of the shooting, and you can understand why. It’s easy enough to distance yourself from a player who may end up going to jail for a very long time. But it’s something totally different when everyone who watches Alabama for the rest of this season has to reckon with the reality that the Miller, a guy averaging almost 19 points per game, brought the weapon that resulted in a senseless death.
Sorry, but the only person who is in the wrong place at the wrong time here is the coach who seems to be completely unprepared and incapable of handling a situation of this magnitude.
It’s not my job to say whether there should be legal liability for Miller. Tuscaloosa chief deputy district attorney Paula Whitley told AL.com that there’s “nothing we could charge (Miller) with,” according to Alabama laws.
But that doesn’t mean he should be free of consequences because he’s one of the best basketball prospects on the planet.
If the narrative from Tuesday’s hearing is correct — that Miles asked Miller to bring him his gun and that Davis had gotten it out of Miller’s car before pulling the trigger — than it is hard to look at Alabama’s basketball program as anything other than a farce and a national embarrassment for being too spineless to discipline a player who did something awful.
Miller is about to be a millionaire many times over. Why would he agree to bring a friend’s gun anywhere, much less into a situation that had the potential to go bad for everyone? What did he think was going to happen? And why does Oats consider this a case of “wrong place, wrong time” when we now know that three of his players were at least tangentially involved in a shooting, even if their self-defense argument proves successful in court?
This isn’t college kids being college kids. This is not normal. Oats may not bear responsibility for the actions of his players when they’re on their own, but he is responsible for how his program responds when confronted with information about what his players have done.
For Oats, this apparently didn’t rise beyond the level of thoughts and prayers so the games will go on. His best player will continue getting buckets. They may even win a national championship. But if Oats’ understanding of the situation is this shallow, this callous and this cynical, it doesn’t matter how far Alabama goes in the NCAA tournament. The season has already been lost.
