How Do You Not Fire Juwan Howard?
I grew up in the golden era of Bob Knight.
He was a bully. I know that now, but I didn’t know it as a gullible 7-year-old watching Knight win his third National Championship for Indiana just as the movie “Hoosiers” was busy winning Oscars on the night of the 1987 title game. All I thought was that this is a leader of men who used every tactic necessary to extract every ounce of talent to win.
Still, as I got older, I understood that coaching doesn’t work in the manner of being a bully. I also know that I don’t care where you’re from. Whether it’s from Ohio or blocks from Stony Island Avenue. on the southside of Chicago, you don’t get to act like a jack ass and stay employed.
Yet, sure enough, spineless Michigan is just fine with Juwan Howard. He had an incident with Maryland in the Big Ten Tournament a year ago. He’s argued constantly with officials and Sunday’s stunning handshake incident in Madison was maddening in itself.
Not that there needed to be a set up for dismissal, but guys! He’s not new to being a jerk like this! His assistants let it go. They didn’t stop him. His team rallies around that energy. Who cares if it’s good or bad for college basketball to have a “Michigan vs. Everyone” mentality, if you’re an alum of the Ann Arbor institution, you ought to be embarrassed.
Bob Knight put a hand on a player and was unceremonious dismissed by the Indiana administration. It took awhile. It took many chances. It took a zero-tolerance policy.
But it ended because that was the one line you cannot cross: Putting your hands on someone. (…and there was tape of it!)
Michigan is telling you that you can cross that line.
You tell me which parts of this thing are the most ridiculous. Is it Howard putting a press on down 14 with a minute to go and whining about a coach calling timeout to get his second stringers organized? How else are you supposed to give kids a chance to compete in a game-like environment considering all the practice work they do during the week?
Maybe it’s Kendrick Perkins on ESPN saying we should just eliminate the handshake line. Yup, that’s a great example to set for kids. If you don’t like what just happened, don’t show any sportsmanship. Great idea!! Plus, considering all the bruising battles during the 1980’s, those Big Ten teams still managed to shake hands like men. Why can’t they now? Officially the dumbest thought of the week.
Or maybe it’s the Michigan Athletic Director meekly suggesting he’ll wait for the Big Ten to do something, even though he said he watched it happen on TV like the rest of America searching for something on the first football-free Sunday since August. He punted.
It would be easy to write that in any other business, putting your hands on someone would elicit the biggest of punishments. A 5-game suspension and a $40,000 fine aren’t close to what should happen and while I know that basketball is a big money deal in Ann Arbor, this of all things should rise above it. Instead, it’s forcing administrators to ask themselves “Yeah, but is it worth it?”
It shouldn’t be.
Indiana spent years tolerating crap from Knight and I for one wish they hadn’t. Throwing a chair is one thing, but punching a police officer in Puerto Rico is another. Neil Reed was the end and no one wanted to believe it.
Maybe if Indiana sobered up long before 2000, the folks in Bloomington wouldn’t be still waiting for the next Bob Knight to come along and save the program. Maybe the Hoosiers wouldn’t be looking at 20 years since their last Final Four. Maybe, just maybe, reality would set in that the Hoosiers are no longer the Blue Blood program they think they are.
Michigan is in a unique spot to right the wrong of bully coaches all across the United States. The administrators can send a message to all those summer league parents across America who go from tournament to tournament acting as if coaching their all-star squad gives them the God-given right to act like a moron. They can tell them that you must have dignity when you lead a group of young men.
Michigan can change the landscape of basketball by saying no to violence and restoring honor to the bench. But they won’t.
They don’t care and that’s sad.
