The Jalen Rose "Controversy"

I watched the Fab 5 documentary on ESPN on Sunday night and I thought it was outstanding. Not as good as the 30 for 30 documentaries on The U and Two Escobars but very, very good in it's own right. I remember watching them play in the early 90s like it was yesterday and the documentary helped me to relive some of that.

Many have already heard the controversy that arose when the clip of Jalen Rose aired in the commercials previewing the film. I know one message board I frequent (***cough*** Orangebloods.com ***cough***) that went into a tizzy on a couple of threads when Rose said the following:

"For me Duke was personal. I hated Duke, and I hated everything I felt Duke stood for. Schools like Duke didn’t recruit players like me. I felt like they only recruited black players that were Uncle Toms."

As always, we don't get the full story in just the previews...



Look at that again:

"I was jealous of Grant Hill. He came from a great black family. Congratulations, your mom went to college and was roommates with Hillary Clinton. And your dad played in the NFL — a very well-spoken and successful man. I was upset and bitter my mom had to bust her hump for 20-plus years. I was bitter that I had a professional athlete that was my father that I didn’t know. I resented that more than I resented him. I looked at it as they are who the world accepts and we are who the world hates."

Jalen Rose went on ESPN's First Take yesterday to discuss those comments again.

“As a 17-year-old recruit, that’s exactly how I felt. I felt like I was an inner-city kid from the public school league that was waking up with kerosene heaters for heat in the house, boiling water to wash up, sleeping with hoodies and skullies, that at that time I felt like I wasn’t good enough for certain stages. That’s just a fact,” Rose said. "But also it was something I used as motivation. Now, I understand what their program represents because I’m a mature adult. I know that it’s a private school. I know that they do recruit players from well-to-do, affluent families, but also I understand some of the reason why. So that they don’t see some of their players selling goods or selling their rings for money. Also they want to get kids that are going to represent the program the right way. I get all of that. But that’s the minority, I was speaking for the majority. That’s exactly how I felt then.

Skip Bayless: “So you don’t feel that way today nearly as strongly?

Rose: “Well the bottom line is this, they do recruit a certain type of player. They recruit a lot of players from private schools

Dana Jacobson: “Would they recruit you now?”

Rose: “I think they would recruit my kids. I don’t think they would have recruited me. I never seen Coach K in Detroit, but that’s just me.”

In my opinion, this really isn't the hot button topic that media (or even society as a whole) wants it to be. It's one guy's opinion. I don't think it's necessarily right or wrong but society is so sensitive to race discussions these days that we HAVE to talk about it. That being said, I believe Rose is saying what a lot of people from his upbringing feel. They long to have the type of two parent home life they see in other families and everything else stems from that.

Everyone will continue to discuss it and try to dissect it all kinds of ways. I even read that Grant Hill is working on a rebuttal through the New York Times (edit; here it is: Grant Hill's response). At the end of the day, Duke and Coach K recruit a certain type of player for their program. In my opinion, it has more to do with those who will be extremely disciplined within a set system and have a greater propensity to stay four years (and not so much the one and done types) than it does where in a city you're from. Ironically, Chris Webber went to a private school and was never near the thug he tried to pretend to be. Coach K recruited him (and as Rose pointed out, Webber went to the same school Shane Battier attended). Generally speaking, players from affluent families that send their kids to private high schools tend to fit that mold of a "Coach K player." Is there anything wrong with that? I don't think so. Doesn't necessarily mean those are the best players to go after for every system either. But it works for Duke. They go for certain players that play within a certain scheme. Some players just don't fit that mold (think Allen Iverson types).

That's no different than a player from Stanford (or somewhere similar) commenting that the old Miami football teams recruited fast guys from the hood and as a result, wouldn't even look at the suburban kid that always loved Miami growing up. You don't see Florida teams beating down the doors of players in the northern states because for the most part, their "type" of player doesn't come from that area. Not to say that if a kid there were to fit their mold they wouldn't go after them but on the whole, they don't have. I have friends that HATE Texas with a passion because we don't recruit junior college football players. It doesn't mean they hate me but just points more to the fact that at one time they were huge fans of Texas growing up, had to go a different route out of high school and soured to the fact that for whatever reason, we chose not to recruit them out of junior college. I have absolutely no problem with that at all and I think that is very similar to the situation here, just without using the racial undertones.

Too often we get hung up on a person's choice of words that we miss everything else that was involved with the conversation. In this case it's the phrase "Uncle Tom." Personally I think the context in which Rose used the term was incorrect anyways but ultimately I think it's a big deal over nothing. I come from a two parent home where my parents worked hard to provide for my brother and I. I have cousins who were less fortunate in that regard that used to pick at me when we were younger and call my brother and I "white boy" and stuff like that just because we talked a bit more proper than they did or dressed a certain way. It was all in jest and I don't harbor ill feelings towards them because of it. It's just a reflection of people expressing their opinions, often out of the frustrations they experience in their immediate vicinity or the unfamiliarity that comes when you see something "different" than what you're used to on a daily basis.

I could go on and on about this topic but honestly I don't think it's needed. Sometimes we should all just take a step back and chill out. It helps to read more than just a headline or a snippet of a conversation too before forming an opinion.

What do you think?

-M.G.M.