Nets Season in Peril: Krstic Gone for the Season

A season-ending knee injury to Nenad Krstic will have some serous long-range impact on the New Jersey Nets’ season. Without the 23-year old Krstic the Nets, who are already struggling along with an 11-15 record, now have no dependable big man with the ability to pull opposing centers out to the elbow as well as use his post moves as weapons. Krstic, averaging 16.4 ppg and 6.8 rpg, was the third-leading scorer among centers behind Houston’s Yao Ming and San Antonio’s Tim Duncan:

The 7-footer was hurt during the third quarter of Friday night’s game against the Los Angeles Lakers. The team announced Saturday he had a tear of his anterior cruciate ligament in his left knee.Krstic caught a pass from Richard Jefferson in the lane and started to back Lakers center Kwame Brown toward the basket. But he fell to the court, clutching his knee.

Krstic is averaging 16.4 points and 6.8 rebounds this season. In his three years in the NBA with New Jersey, he has averaged 12.4 points and six rebounds.

The team did not announce when Krstic would undergo surgery.

“It is very unfortunate for Nenad as well as the team to lose a player of his magnitude,” said Nets general manager Ed Stefanski. “Nenad is a wonderful young man and a tireless worker. This will be another challenge for him and I know that he will be up to the task.”

Ironically, Krstic had taken last summer off from playing internationally for Serbia and Montenegro for the first time in several years in order to rest his body for the NBA season.

After the game, Krstic and Nets’ head coach Lawrence Frank had to say about the injury:

“I went to spin, my knee twisted and I heard a pop, Krstic said.”

“You feel horrible for the kid,” Nets coach Lawrence Frank said. “You don’t want to see anyone get hurt in this game. He’s such a good kid, you forget the fact he’s a really good player. Your heart goes out to him.”

Duke U. Lacrosse Team Rape Case Update: And to Think Jim Brown Was the Best-Ever At This Game, Too

The vultures are circling as Durham District Attorney Mike Nifong dropped charges of first-degree forcible rape against three former Duke Lacrosse players. Though Nifong says he will pursue other charges against the lacrosse players, it appears that his case is unraveling before the public’s eyes.

On October 22, 2006 I posted a piece, “60 Minutes and the Duke University Rape Case.” Admittedly, the original post was written just after I began this blog. At the time I was remembering a writing voice I once actively used and attempting to incorporate that voice with broader perspectives and new ways of communicating my worldview. I hope the result equals a voice with added range, a sharper, yet more nuanced disgust at the Western world, and a greater appreciation for the potential beauty that lies at the heart of the human experience. As a result, I am reproducing that piece below, altering various stylistic errors and weaving in recent news and perspectives on the case.

Sunday, October 22, 2006, 60 Minutes produced a hit piece on the woman who accused of three Duke Lacrosse players of rape. The piece by Ed Bradley was particularly galling on a number of fronts.

Even a cursory glance at the piece allowed the casual observer to notice that, though the piece centered around former Duke Lacrosse players David Evans, Reade Seligmann, and Colin Finnerty, and Durham District Attorney Mike Nifong, each key face in the piece was black: Bradley, the anchor; the accuser; the accuser’s partner at the party; the Duke law professor. Bradley acted out his role as “objective observer” with aplomb.

The accuser’s partner, Kim Roberts, was allowed by Bradley to present evidence and contradict herself as she provided the evidence without so much as a token challenge from the actor playing the role of the ultimate “let the story tell itself” newsman, Bradley.

Bradley, like the national media covering the case omits the fact that Roberts made a deal with Durham Superior Court Judge Robert Hobgood, to submit to two months house arrest in order to avoid a six-month jail sentence for a variety of charges:

[Roberts, in 2001, was arrested for] embezzling $25,000 from a Durham photofinishing company.

Roberts was charged with five violations, including not keeping up with payments, missing appointments with her probation officer, leaving the state without permission and quitting a job and moving without notifying probation officials, said Terrence Eason, chief probation officer.

Roberts must serve at least 60 days of her electronic house arrest. If she pays back $1,400 of missed restitution payments, she can get off house arrest early.

The lowered sentence allowed Bradley to conduct the interview with Roberts from her home rather than from jail, which would have automatically cast her statements in a disparaged light.

The black law professor, James E. Coleman, Jr. was allowed by Bradley to defend the three white boys with an appalling, it’s just “boys being boys” indulging in the time-honored collegiate tradition of excessive drinking. Colman then proceeded to accuse Nifong of pandering to black voters and subtly imply that reverse racism was at work in the case:

Coleman found that while many of the players drank alcohol excessively, they had no history of violent or racist behavior. Professor Coleman believes that the three indicted players are victims in this case – victims of an overzealous prosecutor who pandered to the black community in the middle of an election campaign.

“I think that he pandered to the community by saying ‘I’m gonna go out there and defend your interests in seeing that these hooligans who committed the crime are prosecuted. I’m not gonna let their fathers, with all of their money, buy you know big-time lawyers and get them off. I’m doing this for you.’ You know, what are you to conclude about a prosecutor who says to you, ‘I’ll do whatever it takes to get this set of defendants?’ What does it say about what he’s willing to do to get poor black defendants,” Coleman asks.

Asked if he thinks the D.A. committed prosecutorial misconduct, Coleman says, “Yes, I mean I think that’s the whole point. And if this case resulted in a conviction, I think there would be a basis to have the conviction overturned based on his conduct. I think in this case, it appears that this prosecutor has set out to develop whatever evidence he could to convict people he already concluded were guilty.”

A party in which women are called to come and strip for dozens of men doesn’t establish sexist behavior. I gather that means the term “lacrosstitutes” as reported on MSNBC) in reference to female Duke students who act as groupies-sex objects for the lacrosse team means nothing. I gather that Ryan Finnerty’s November 2005 arrest in Washington, D.C. for street-jacking two gay men means nothing – sorry, my bad, that would be documented homophobic behavior and certainly cannot, fall under “sexist” and “racist.” I gather that means kicking in doors and urinating out public windows, as reported in the Raleigh News & Observer, means nothing.

I gather Ryan McFayden’s email indicating he was having a party the evening after the alleged rape and writing that he would kill the strippers, skin them while “cumming in my Duke-issue spandex” means nothing. However, all of these activities were left out of Coleman’s report and Bradley’s 60 Minutes piece.

Coleman, who was assigned by the university to conduct a five-year study of instances of racism, sexism, and excessive drinking by student-athletes in comparison with the general student populace, conveniently omitted these facts reported by Jim Nesbitt, Benjamin Niolet, and Lorenzo Perez of the Raleigh News & Observer:

The warning signs of a Duke University lacrosse team skidding toward disaster are scattered through the courthouse records of Durham and Orange counties — and have been for at least the past seven years. Speeding down I-40 while drunk. Urinating in public. Using an adult’s ID to buy a case of beer while underage. Kicking in the slats of a fence after an argument with a girlfriend.

Since 1999, records show, 41 Blue Devil lacrosse players — about 31 percent of all players on the roster from then until now — have been charged with a variety of rowdy and drunken acts.

Of this year’s squad of 47 players — their season canceled, their coach exiled and their university shamed — roughly a third have been charged with similar misdemeanors.

In contrast, records show, only two members of Duke’s 27-man soccer squad for this year have been arrested — on charges of misdemeanor property damage and resisting arrest. Four of this year’s 22 baseball players have been arrested in connection with underage alcohol offenses, all misdemeanors, records show.

None of the misdemeanor charges encompasses the ugliness of team member Ryan McFadyen’s searing e-mail in which he threatened to kill and skin strippers or a racially provocative insult shouted by an unidentified white male on Buchanan Boulevard the night of the team party.

Apparently neither Bradley nor his 60 Minutes research team could uncover these facts that a simple search in the News & Observer for “Ryan Finnerty arrest” unveiled. In the same article by the three News & Observer writers we find additional damning pieces of evidence left by the wayside by major media outlets including CBS:

“There is a culture at Duke of an entitlement to be drunk in the evenings and on the weekends,” said Robert Panoff, a former Notre Dame club lacrosse player who has lived for more than a decade in Trinity Park, the neighborhood on the edge of Duke’s east campus where the lacrosse team captains lived.

“That’s the attitude that pervades the Duke campus, and it’s not just the lacrosse team,” said Panoff, founder and executive director of a nonprofit research and education organization. “There is a particular swagger at Duke. Is there a particular machismo and variation of that swagger on the lacrosse team? Absolutely.”

Former Duke baseball players say loutish behavior and dancers at team parties weren’t just a lacrosse thing — they did the same thing and often joined the lacrosse team at tailgate parties during Duke football games.

But Duke’s current baseball players haven’t racked up an arrest record like the lacrosse team’s. Triangle court records show 16 lacrosse players currently on the roster have been arrested in the past three years on charges ranging from public urination on a private residence to underage possession of a malt beverage to helping a minor get a mixed drink.

In addition, sophomore player Collin Finnerty and two friends were arrested last fall in Washington on simple assault charges. Finnerty was ordered to perform 25 hours of community service in Washington; if he does, the charges will be dropped, his attorney said.

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At this point allow me to change gears and further undress (all puns intended) the “evidence” presented in the 60 Minutes piece.

According to Bradley, the party that ended in rape began at 2 p.m. The dancers arrived at the party at midnight. This means the principals in this incident, those in the house at 610 North Buchannon Blvd., were close to trashed by the time the dancers arrived – unless, of course, they were periodically snorting cocaine during the day and night. And don’t act surprised that I speculate about cocaine usage. As a student who attended private schools, I know the certainty that rich, white boys, long parties, alcohol and coke are the norm. Even now, I live across the street from rich white college students, some of whom are lacrosse and rugby players, and they have readily divulged that there’s coke is at every big party.

So, we have a scene set with drunk, probably coked-up white boys awaiting two “Negresses” to come over and strip for them – for two hours. This means that some people at the party were drinking for close to 12 hours. That’s right, 12 hours.

According to Kim Roberts’ statements during the 60 Minutes interview, she and her fellow dancer performed for about 10 minutes when she was asked by one of the partiers if they had sex toys. She replied, “No.” The person then told Roberts that was no problem, they’d just use this (a broomstick) on the dancers. Roberts indicated that she felt threatened, and that she and the rape accuser agreed to dress and leave. However, this is where Roberts’ story gets dicey.

Within 20 after arriving, the dancers are leaving the house. the other dancer (”Nikki”) allegedly said to Roberts, “Let’s go back in.” When Roberts asked why, Nikki replied, “Because there’s more money to be made.” So, did Roberts explain that the pair already made $800 dollars for no more than 20 minutes work, meaning there was, in all likelihood, no more money to be made? No. Incredibly, Roberts informs the nation that she agreed with Nikki and reentered the house!

After another 45 minutes or so, according to Roberts, she went to her car. Meanwhile Nikki at this point was visibly drunk and seemingly impaired by another substance (We were falling over each other while we were dancing; I knew something was wrong with her [Nikki].”. Pictures from the crime scene show Nikki half-dressed fumbling for her belongings, and then passed out on the top of the steps of the house, still half-dressed.

At this point, Roberts’ 60 Minutes story again becomes even less credible. Roberts said she was in her car in front of the house waiting for Nikki. According to Roberts, “Nikki helped them (some people from the party) walk her to the car.” Nikki helped them walk her??? How does this happen? How does a woman who, a few minutes before was photographed passed out, who was stumbling and unable to dance, help others walk her? This is an unbelievable statement, that, in itself, should call into question the motives of Roberts.

In addition to Roberts’ transgressions, Bradley implied that the Durham police responded immediately to the complaint and searched the house. The truth is that the Durham police waited two days before searching the house, allowing the lacrosse players 48 crucial hours to clean up the house and get their stories straight.

Finally, it is reprehensible for 60 Minutes to fail to inform the public that Nikki, as the alleged victim is known, is first a mother of two and a college student at North Carolina Central; that she began dancing a scant two months before the incident at the party took place, and that her only reason for doing so was to support her family.

A tantalizing piece of evidence reported by Bradley tells us that a Durham police affidavit showed that the lacrosse players misled the dancers, saying the party was just for a few track and baseball players.” This clue to the real purpose of the lacrosse players relative to this lie was left unexplored by Bradley.

I wonder if that lie is the key to understanding this on-going story. Lying to get the dancers meant it was known that if the truth was told, there would be no dancers. No dancers meant no fulfilled white boy dreams of having sex with the great “Black Exotic Unknown” – a drugged mother of two who was a college student just up the road from the pristine halls of Duke University.

————

Today, the portion of the CBS News website dealing with the 60 Minutes feature contains a video update. Visiting the site you will see the face of H.P. Coleman ex-manager of the club in which the North Carolina Central student, single mother of two, and alleged rape victim worked. The caption beneath the still-picture face reads: H.P. Thomas, an ex-manager at a strip club where the accuser danced, says that two weeks after the alleged rape she performed normally, despite complaining of severe pain to police and hospital staff.

It is a still image akin to the purposely-altered, darkened face of O.J. Simpson on Time magazine. The image of this black man, for all the world seeming to be at the ready to condemn a black woman’s actions as incongruent, is morbidly still; a black man, a man “of his own kind,” at the ready to tell a white world its collective fears of blackness have a renewed validity and a viable place in today’s America.

Yum.

Allen Iverson: “First Night” in Denver Comes Early

At the Pepsi Center in Denver the “First Night” celebration of a new year came nine days early for the Denver Nuggets. The Allen Iverson Era began for the Nuggets and their fans with 3:25 left in the 1st quarter of last night’s game against the Sacramento Kings when Iverson, wearing his trademark number 3, entered the game to a standing ovation from the Nuggets’ faithful.

The ovation was repeated two minutes later when Iverson hit his first basket as a Nugget, a foul line jumper, at the 1:26 mark off a pick and roll with Linas Kleiza. The play prompted Denver telecast announcers Chris Marlowe and Scott Hastings to glowingly comment that the pick and roll with Denver’s past point guards (read, the jump shooting-challenged Andre Miller) was missing from the Nuggets’ offense. Unfortunately, Iverson’s court presence had little effect on the Nuggets’ defense, particularly down the stretch, as Denver fell to Sacramento 101-96.

Iverson ended the game playing 39 minutes while scoring 22 points on nine-of-15 shooting. Though the Nuggets shot a woeful 37.1% collectively, AI was still able to collect 10 dimes from his rim-clanging teammates. Despite the loss which dropped Denver to 14-10, 3.5 games behind Northwest Division-leading Utah, it was easy to envision the explosive nature of the Nuggets with the addition of Iverson when Carmelo Anthony, and J.R. Smith return from their suspensions and Marcus Camby recovers from a broken finger.

The downside of the Iverson trade and suspended and injured Nuggets became glaringly evident against the Kings. Minus 6’4″ Andre Miller and the 6’6″ Smith, Boykins is now Denver’s only true point guard. The obvious challenge for George Karl’s team will be whether to keep the 6’1″Iverson at shooting guard while 5’7″Earl Boykins plays the point. Last night the two guards’ lack of size was exploited, particularly on the defensive end of the floor, by the Kings taller rotating triumvirate of 6’1″ Mike Bibby, 6″7″ Kevin Martin and 6’6″ John Salmons.

Taking advantage of Boykins and Iverson will quickly become a trend as coaches around the league view the tape of this game. To counter these mismatches, Karl may be forced to play backup shooting guard/forward DerMarr Johnson (6’9″) extended minutes, move Iverson to the point, and Boykins to the bench. Look for Denver to trade for a point guard before the February 22 trade deadline.

However this night wasn’t about Denver’s weaknesses, thin roster, or psychically recovering from the fight at Madison Square Garden. This night was for Allen Iverson and the fans of Denver. If Iverson can see the Nuggets through to even five wins in the absence of Anthony and Smith, he will be seen as a savior in Denver. And the remainder of the season will be a Mile High love-in as the Nuggets journey to the playoffs.

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Notes: DerMarr Johnson, Denver’s previous number 3, apparently gave AI his number free of charge and changed his jersey to number 8….. Boykins led the Nuggets with 25 points, while DerMarr Johnson added 12. The Kings were led by Salmons and Brad Miller who scored each scored 21 points (click here for box score).

Allen Iverson: “First Night” in Denver Comes Early

At the Pepsi Center in Denver the “First Night” celebration of a new year came nine days early for the Denver Nuggets. The Allen Iverson Era began for the Nuggets and their fans with 3:25 left in the 1st quarter of last night’s game against the Sacramento Kings when Iverson, wearing his trademark number 3, entered the game to a standing ovation from the Nuggets’ faithful.

The ovation was repeated two minutes later when Iverson hit his first basket as a Nugget, a foul line jumper, at the 1:26 mark off a pick and roll with Linas Kleiza. The play prompted Denver telecast announcers Chris Marlowe and Scott Hastings to glowingly comment that the pick and roll with Denver’s past point guards (read, the jump shooting-challenged Andre Miller) was missing from the Nuggets’ offense. Unfortunately, Iverson’s court presence had little effect on the Nuggets’ defense, particularly down the stretch, as Denver fell to Sacramento 101-96.

Iverson ended the game playing 39 minutes while scoring 22 points on nine-of-15 shooting. Though the Nuggets shot a woeful 37.1% collectively, AI was still able to collect 10 dimes from his rim-clanging teammates. Despite the loss which dropped Denver to 14-10, 3.5 games behind Northwest Division-leading Utah, it was easy to envision the explosive nature of the Nuggets with the addition of Iverson when Carmelo Anthony, and J.R. Smith return from their suspensions and Marcus Camby recovers from a broken finger.

The downside of the Iverson trade and suspended and injured Nuggets became glaringly evident against the Kings. Minus 6’4″ Andre Miller and the 6’6″ Smith, Boykins is now Denver’s only true point guard. The obvious challenge for George Karl’s team will be whether to keep the 6’1″Iverson at shooting guard while 5’7″Earl Boykins plays the point. Last night the two guards’ lack of size was exploited, particularly on the defensive end of the floor, by the Kings taller rotating triumvirate of 6’1″ Mike Bibby, 6″7″ Kevin Martin and 6’6″ John Salmons.

Taking advantage of Boykins and Iverson will quickly become a trend as coaches around the league view the tape of this game. To counter these mismatches, Karl may be forced to play backup shooting guard/forward DerMarr Johnson (6’9″) extended minutes, move Iverson to the point, and Boykins to the bench. Look for Denver to trade for a point guard before the February 22 trade deadline.

However this night wasn’t about Denver’s weaknesses, thin roster, or psychically recovering from the fight at Madison Square Garden. This night was for Allen Iverson and the fans of Denver. If Iverson can see the Nuggets through to even five wins in the absence of Anthony and Smith, he will be seen as a savior in Denver. And the remainder of the season will be a Mile High love-in as the Nuggets journey to the playoffs.

———-

Notes: DerMarr Johnson, Denver’s previous number 3, apparently gave AI his number free of charge and changed his jersey to number 8….. Boykins led the Nuggets with 25 points, while DerMarr Johnson added 12. The Kings were led by Salmons and Brad Miller who scored each scored 21 points (click here for box score).