‘Unbiased’ or ‘chintzy?’ Coaches’ anonymous comments about UK players set off debate.
Depending on your point of view, an assessment of former Kentucky players in this year’s NBA Draft posted online last week was:
▪ A candid evaluation of strengths and weaknesses.
▪ A collection of cheap shots delivered by lily-livered college coaches hiding behind anonymity.
▪ An attempt by rival coaches to weaken UK recruiting by implying that an NBA career does not automatically follow signing with and then playing for Kentucky.
Ashton Hagans’ game was described as “trash.” EJ Montgomery? “Soft.” Tyrese Maxey? “One of the more overrated guys in the draft.” Nick Richards? “I don’t know that I think he’s ever going to be a particularly good (NBA) player.” Immanuel Quickley? “A hell of a college player” who “benefited from poor officiating” to get to the foul line, and is an “overseas player.”
Among those reacting online was UK Coach John Calipari. He tweeted, “It always disappoints me when coaches talk anonymously about kids. I would hope that no coach would try to hurt a young person just to hurt a program.”
ESPN analyst Seth Greenberg called the coaches making anonymous comments “cowardly.” Former LSU Coach Dale Brown, who grew up in North Dakota, called the comments “chintzy.” He then added that “chintzy in North Dakota is chickensh--.”
The Athletic posted the assessments as part of a series that began last year. An evaluation of Obi Toppin followed on Friday. Previous subjects have included a trio of players from Gonzaga, plus Zion Williamson, Coby White and De’Andre Hunter.
The author, Sam Vecenie, a senior writer for The Athletic, said he spoke to assistant coaches (and one lower-level staffer) in and out of the Southeastern Conference in compiling the assessments of Kentucky players. “The reason I choose assistants is because they are the ones that do pregame scouts on these guys,” Vecenie said.
When asked if he granted the assistant coaches anonymity in order to produce more candid assessments, Vecenie said, “Yeah. Absolutely. The goal is to get the most candid responses possible.” He wanted “unbiased” and “unfiltered” judgments, Vecenie said.
Using anonymous sources has long been problematic in journalism. The Society of Professional Journalists Code of Ethics says that reporters should “consider sources’ motives before promising anonymity.”
Kakie Urch, an associate professor in UK’s School of Journalism and Media, said she teaches her students to only use anonymous sources when there is “an extraordinarily compelling reason” and after consultation with “several layers of higher editors.”
Urch said she subscribes to The Athletic and gave subscriptions to two nephews.
“So I love The Athletic,” she said. “I think they’re a great journalistic entity.”
Urch acknowledged the possible problem with anonymous sources. “It is my job to teach students to not give people with an agenda a platform.” The UK journalism professor seemed to have a mixed reaction to the posting. She said that she trusted the professionals at The Athletic. Yet, she said, “I think people really respect basketball coaches. I think it’s beneath basketball coaches to do this.”
It’s not unusual to see quasi-anonymous tweets and reactions to postings online in stories. Anonymous sourcing could be considered “a new journalism story genre,” Urch said.
“But that doesn’t mean it’s better,” former Georgia Coach Hugh Durham said of the new genre. “If you’re a college basketball coach and you’re used to taking the heat, if you’re making comments like that, either step up and take the heat or just don’t say anything.”
Vecenie, who previously worked for CBS Sports, said he had spoken to Kentucky’s coaching staff since his story on the UK players was posted.
“No one in that room is upset with anything on my end with what I wrote,” he said. “There may have been some disappointment with evaluations on certain players. More than that, it was about the frankness of language used.
“If we’re going to parse over language and words and things like that, I’m not real concerned about that, to be honest.”
Vecenie said he has covered seven NBA drafts. In the mock draft he updated on Tuesday, he had only three UK players being drafted: Maxey the 17th pick, Quickley the 49th and Richards the 59th. He said among all players eligible for the draft he ranked Hagans in the low 80s, Kahlil Whitney at about 100 and Montgomery outside the top 150.
Ryan Blake, the Director of Scouting for the NBA, said comments by college coaches — anonymous or otherwise — are not highly valued.
“The NBA or pro decision-makers are people who will make that decision,” he said. “And they’re not going to listen to college coaches.”
Bobby Marks, an NBA analyst for ESPN as the network’s Front Office Insider, said in a text that the anonymous comments about UK players were “a hatchet job” that “doesn’t have any merit, especially when it’s coming from college coaches.”
Rupp revisited
The idea of re-naming Rupp Arena re-ignites the long-running debate about Adolph Rupp and racism. The failure to take advantage of his exalted status by leading the way to integrating college basketball in the South helped fuel the perception of Rupp as a racist.
Rupp’s successor as Kentucky coach, Joe B. Hall, shared his thoughts in the 2019 book he co-authored with Marianne Walker, a retired professor of English and philosophy at Henderson Community College.
“I often heard him be intolerant of some people, but I never once heard him be intolerant of anyone based ONLY on that person’s color, ethnicity or religion,” Hall says of Rupp in the book, which is titled “Coach Hall: My Life On and Off the Court.”
Texas Western, which had an all-Black starting lineup, beat all-white Kentucky in the 1966 national championship game that became known as a historical milestone in college basketball in refuting presumptions of Black players.
The book points out that no Southeastern Conference team nor the Duke team that Kentucky beat in the national semifinals had a Black player at the time.
“Yet Coach Rupp was the one who got blistered for it, no doubt because his mouthy, egotistical, arrogant manner, plus his astonishingly long string of successes, made him fodder for the media and an easy target . . . ,” Hall says in the book.
“I think his age, his dour appearance and his manner of speaking contributed to his reputation in the press. . . . He had a tendency to avoid looking directly at the person with whom he was speaking, and he kept his chin tilted up in the air. His smile looked more like a smirk.”
Of course, integration at the time would include road trips to the deep South where danger lurked for Black people, particularly those challenging the norm.
“Concerned parents, especially African-American ones, needed to know that their sons were going to be looked after, protected by their coaches once they got to UK,” Hall says. “But I don’t think they got that feeling from talking to Coach Rupp and Harry (Lancaster, the assistant coach). And they had no way of knowing that those two were never father figures to me or to any of the white players, either.”
‘Mixed message’
Dan Wann is a psychology professor at Murray State. Should this fall see colleges reopen with students required to practice social distancing and football being played, he offered a pointed observation.
“We require students to be no less than 6 feet apart in the classroom,” Wann said. “Say, you have two football players in class. They can’t be within 6 feet of each other. Then they’re going to leave my classroom and go tackle each other?
“That’s sending such a terrible mixed message. I just don’t think that looks good.”
Happy birthday
To Antwain Barbour. He turned 38 on Friday. . . . To Tennessee Coach Rick Barnes. He turned 66 on Friday. . . . To Verne Lundquist. The former CBS college basketball broadcaster turned 80 on Friday. . . . To Bam Adebayo. He turned 23 on Saturday. . . . To Derek Anderson. He turned 46 on Saturday. . . . To John Pelphrey. He turned 52 on Saturday.
This story was originally published July 19, 2020 at 8:14 AM.
