The Laker formerly known as Ron Artest apparently didn’t think much of it.
“I remember as a kid and playing for coaches who would do worst than The Rutgers former coach,” the Laker now known as Metta World Peace tweeted ungrammatically after videos surfaced showing Rutgers hoops Coach Mike Rice throwing basketballs at players from point blank range while referring to them by an array of politically incorrect terms.
In case you were dead, Rutgers fired Rice on April 3, almost immediately after the videos shot during various practices went viral. Besides World Peace, about the only person not condemning Rice on various social networking sites was the Pope.
But Metta World Peace’s tweet about Rice doing his Bobby Knight imitation got me thinking (I know, that can be a dangerous proposition). How unusual were the coach’s actions? I mean, collegiate basketball is a gazillion dollar business. Companies lose billions of dollars annually through sluggish productivity because employees are more concerned about office betting pools during the NCAA basketball tournament. Stress is constant. Pressure is part of the job. Surely, Mike Rice isn’t the only coach in America who has flown off the proverbial handle.
So I called my friend at MiraCosta College, Pat Conahan, who not only coaches the men’s team, but serves as the school’s athletic director and once played hoops for both MiraCosta and UC San Diego.
“I’ve never seen anything comparable to that,” he said. “A coach being tough on a player can be good for them, depending on the situation. Sometimes a young man needs to be dealt with honestly. But what I saw on that video clearly was out of line.”
Conahan admits he’s found himself frustrated on more than a few occasions. Why, once he even threw a jacket on a chair. In disgust! But he wasn’t about to give Rice any slack.
Nor was Charlie Mercado, who serves not only Vista High School’s varsity basketball coach, but as director of GamePoint Basketball, a North County-based club league that is home to prep stars Kameron Rooks of Mission Hills High (who will be playing for UC Berkeley in the fall) and Jeff Van Dyke of La Costa Canyon High (who will be playing for Pepperdine University).
“I wouldn’t want to know what would happen to me if I threw a basketball at a kid’s face,” he said. “Obviously, at that level, coaches are going to be more intense, but you can’t be doing what he did. That was highly inappropriate.”
But both Conahan and Mercado conceded tempers can flare.
“I’ve had coaches when I was younger who would go nose to nose with me, spit flying in my face and all that,” Mercado recalled. “My parents said if I didn’t like it, then don’t mess up.”
Indeed, a Twitter user named Anthony Mazzola quipped last week that “Coach Rice from @RutgersU should just claim that he is just terrible at passing the ball.” And Matt Joyce tweeted that “Mike rice should apply for a job coaching Rutgers dodgeball program.”
New Jersey Gov. Chris Christie wasn’t making light of the situation. In successive tweets sent April 3, the Governor wrote:
“This was a regrettable episode for @RutgersU, but I completely support the decision to remove Coach Rice. It was the right & necessary action to take in light of the conduct displayed on the videotape. Parents entrust their sons to the @RUAthletics Department & the men’s basketball program at an incredibly formative period of their lives. The way these young men were treated by the head coach was completely unacceptable & violates the trust parents put in @RutgersU. All of the student-athletes entrusted to our care deserve much better. As we move on from this, I’m very optimistic that @RutgersU will select a new head coach who not only puts a winning team on the court……but will make everyone proud of the example he sets every day for the young men in his charge.”
That’s pretty much how MiraCosta College men’s soccer coach Frank Zimmerman felt.
“What I saw was appalling,” he said. “It’s just another sad example of people getting so wrapped up in the results-driven world we live in that they forget we’re their to develop our student athletes and teach them how to mature into outstanding young men and women.”
Added Zimmerman: “It’s just a jacked up world we live in.”
David Ogul is a longtime reporter and editor who has worked at numerous Southern California daily newspapers in a career spanning more than three decades. He now runs his own communications company and writes a column for The Coast News. He can be reached at OgulCommunications@gmail.com