A Career on Brink? Feinstein Critics Can't Hold His Laptop Carrying Case
Prior to the 1982-83 season, John Feinstein impressed Bob Knight after penning an incisive "Knight School" feature on Knight's coaching proteges in The Sporting News' inaugural Basketball Yearbook promptly challenging Street & Smith's annual edition for preseason prominence at newsstands a quarter century before they merged. Midway through the 1980s, there was testimony to the explosion of interest in college hoops when "A Season on the Brink," written by Feinstein chronicling a campaign with Indiana's storied program under Knight, emerged as the best-selling sports book of all time. Those sterling credentials among many more didn't matter much recently when the acclaimed author claimed in his Washington Post column that cocaine-overdose Fall-American Len Bias shouldn't be in Maryland's Hall of Fame.
Numerous critics challenged Feinstein's literary standing and ripped him as idiotic, inane, irrational, moronic, myopic, ridiculous, sanctimonious, simplistic, ad nauseam, until the intolerant politically-correct police shifted their ire toward ex-NFL coach Tony Dungy regarding his candid "religious-right" remark about about not wanting to get on the gay-support train with Sam Who I Am. The anti-faith lame-stream media's pitchforks and torches flourish if someone is an open Christian and advocate for traditional marriage. Of course, the country certainly needs ESPN's self-absorbed Edward R. Murrow-Olbermann lecturing us on ethics and morality rather than selfless Dungy's longstanding example.
An exceptional debate on Bias sets the generational-gap stage for displaying how American exceptionalism across-the-board is on the wane. Far too many media elite and lunatic liberals live in an ideological fantasy world of teachable moments and what should be rather than personal responsibility and what actually exists. It seems we are at a pivotal crossroads; not only in sports but the nation as a whole. As standards erode, it likely won't be long until weed no longer is a banned substance by the NCAA. The culture conflict has seasoned veterans and traditions frowned upon by individualism gone crazy. By any measure, a majority of today's strapping jocks can't hold a jock strap to #34 Bias and most of the current lapdog sports media can't hold a laptop carrying case to Feinstein.
There is a character clause attached to the UM Hall of Fame ("not been a source of embarrassment in any way"). As values erode over the decades in a celebrity-obsessed culture, dying of cocaine abuse must no longer signify a character blemish. It appears as if many permissive observers have become as delusional as former Terrapins coach Lefty Driesell, a Duke graduate who was convinced Bias had never used cocaine prior to the night of his demise. If gifted Bias had kept his nose clean and wasn't so fond of the Chapter III nightlife, the second pick overall in the 1986 NBA draft (by the Boston Celtics) boasted the potential to become an all-time great pro. Woulda. Coulda. Shoulda. Instead, he is in the Hall of Shame for anyone with fine and lasting standards in an increasingly valueless society simply looking the other way. After all, spit happens; especially when utilizing a moral-relativity cop-out regarding it's a disease and not a personal choice.
Whether or not disconcerting signs stemmed from Bias' off-the-court personal-responsibility activity, there were underachiever warnings amid a modest 5-4 NCAA playoff record and career averages of 16.4 ppg and 5.7 rpg. He was capable of so much more than being propped up as a textbook student-athlete Geek tragedy martyr of some sort. Ringing a mite hollow are his last words: "I (a horse) can handle anything." Sans an intervention (corralling a horse), odds are he would have flamed out in the NBA much like fellow "high" draft choices William Bedford and Chris Washburn. And, by the way, Juan Dixon and Joe Smith clearly had more productive Terrapin careers than Bias, who acted as a "courtesy middleman" in the drug dealing according to a prosecutor. Isn't that unsavory charge a source of embarrassment in some way? Apparently, the HOF nominating committee failed to put any stock in the book "Lenny, Lefty and the Chancellor" where C. Fraser Smith wrote: "Bias died under circumstances that were, at best, acutely embarrassing, and, at worst, immensely costly in reputation."
The Big Ten Conference lowered its on-court standards accepting Rutgers as a member. Did the league lower its off-the-court standards accepting Maryland as a member? Didn't Bias' dad accuse UM of neglecting scholastic endeavors? Diminished values spill over into all areas of our life and the buyer's-remorse consequences of piss-poor decisions are a pervert such as Sick Willie in the Out House, more tranquil abortions created than good-paying jobs, philandering preachers lecturing us on morality, IRS employee tax cheats earning bonuses, sick prankster toying with MSLSD's Mental Stall for a Democrap ditz "Eyewitness Exclusive" of a catastrophe and a bystander-in-chief out fundraising and telling lame jokes immediately after 300 people were missile murdered. Pardon the interruption, but the "Audacity of Hype" doesn't take the time to do his job and visit our porous border (If the golfer-in-chief won't defend our border then how in chutzpah is he going to provide any meaningful insight to the Israelis protecting their border?) yet recently squeezed in multiple "enlightened" outings with ESPN golfing buddy Michael Wilbon, a former colleague of Feinstein at the Washington Post. Quite frankly, did domestic violence expert Screamin' A. Stiff show up with a canned spiel to provoke anyone by inquiring if the First Lady plans to increase the national debt by taking a separate plane again on vacation while hubby and his JV administration nuance following ISIS to the gates of hell?
Presuming we could discard pathetic political posturing and moral equivalency for a moment or two of diversion immersed in sports, college basketball disappoints by offering "The Carolina Way" becoming a Afro-Studies symbol for academic fraud, mediocre Duke player boasting credentials to purchase $97,800 worth of jewelry, suspect schools craving certifiable liar Bruce Pearl's wisdom to headline their program, customized classes for Air Force standouts infecting the academy, disgraced academician Jimmy V honored incessantly by ESPN and the coaching community despite North Carolina State's academic anemia during his tenure plus Slick Rick moonlighting as a porn star wannabee satisfying his dessert appetite in a deserted Louisville restaurant before giving "partner" $3,000 for "health insurance" to take care of business. Have our standards sunk even below the average SAT score for N.C. State's roster under Jim Valvano?
Feinstein wrote an illuminating TSN cover story on "Hoya Paranoia" at Georgetown under coach John Thompson Jr. for which Joltin' John endured similar flak including from intimidating Big Bad John. After all, one can't criticize a prominent African-American without risk of immediate branding as a racist. If Feinstein could go back in time, perhaps another feature assignment should have been "Terrapin What Might Have Been" focusing on what occurs during recruiting visits for regal recruits such as Bias and subsequent influences on them as impressionable teenagers before the me-myself-and-I scholars are corrupted by their surroundings and spiral out of control at many of these institutions of leftist lower learning. Some of the stimulating extracurricular activity where Bias exercised his self control was dubbed "draining the lizard" by him in the book Born Ready.
At any rate, Feinstein has forgotten more about sports and journalism than most of his biased critics ever will know. And John hasn't forgotten very much, including a proper perspective on Len Bias, who was anything but an innocent victim. Baylor's Isaiah Austin (Marfan Syndrome) was an innocent victim; not Bias. If he is worthy of Maryland's HOF, should Bias also secure a plaque in the ACC's HOF and/or the Naismith HOF? How about a Medal of Freedom honor from passive POTUS since the drug users have something in common beyond basketball? Feinstein's ill-informed detractors, who need "a season inside" his brain to raise their hoop IQs, probably believe so. Assuaging their social-justice guilt, spouting off about "a-great-career-spoiled" makes the authentically simplistic feel better about themselves.
A significant portion of the pious pot-pushing press are comparable to Brent Musburger aimlessly mouthing off to Feinstein in an unseemly fashion prior to the 1989 NCAA championship game between Michigan and Seton Hall. Compared to Feinstein, the derelict media knuckleheads, with the majority of their JV brain cells inactive even before ice bucket challenges, offer as much credibility as Al Bore global-warming claims as stupefying as flying Sharknado.