Yesterday I heard the sad news that former Timberwolf Eddie Griffin had died. It did shock me, but the fact is that in the past five years, the only reasons he ever was in the news for were negative. Griffin was constantly in trouble with the law, and either he a) had an unfortunate accident, b) was driving carelessly or c) decided life was too much to handle anymore. I would hope it was a, but the truth is I'm guessing it was b or most likely c.
When he first left Seton Hall after a year, I thought it was a bad idea. He was extremely talented, yes, but he had maturity issues and was not going to be the next superstar. When the T'Wolves picked him up after he was in the league for a couple years, I wasn't sure what to think. It proved to be a bad experiment, yet one that Kevin McHale would not give up on. Even after Griffin was arrested, the Wolves gave him a healthy contract extension. But he rarely played, and when he did he just didn't look that interested in the game.
So finally, Minnesota cut him. And 6 months afterwards, he was discovered in a car wreck after being hit by a train. I wonder if the Timberwolves kept him around all those seasons not because of his basketball prowess, but because they knew he was so self-destructive. It's hard to say whether anything could have ever turned it around for Griffin, and that's why it's such a heartbreaking story. Yet another case of too much, too soon for a kid barely out of adolescence. So rest in peace Eddie Griffin, I'm sorry nobody could help you out of your tailspin and I hope you have found peace wherever you are now.
Onto more off-the-court/field news. There's no question what Michael Vick did was horribly, horribly wrong. He definitely deserves prison time and at a long ban from football. But I think people's love of dogs in the U.S.A. is causing them to overreact a bit. I don't recall this amount of outrage over anything any athlete has done in my lifetime, whether it be drugs, rape or even murder. When Rae Carruth murdered his pregnant wife, there wasn't this much villainization. True, Carruth is nowhere near Vick's caliber nor the face of the NFL, but still. Have fans become so desensitized to everything else that it takes something new like this to get their ire up? I guess the saying "you look like I just shot your favorite pet" becomes oddly fitting for NFL fans these days.
Vick also lied to a lot of people, claiming that he was innocent and that his name would be cleared, which adds another nail to his coffin. So I guess an overreaction is not necessarily a bad thing, it just should be used in every case like this. Hopefully Roger Goodell's regime will start putting the scattered pieces of the NFL image back together (this may not be the right time, but I'd like to point out that eight months before Goodell started cracking down, I wrote a column about how it was time to clean up the NFL. Coincidence? I think not.).
And to end this entry on a lighter note, Latrell Sprewell's yacht, "Milwaukee's Best," has been repossessed. Now I'm not one for laughing at people's misfortune, but as a Timberwolves fan, the irony of this happening is delicious. The $5-10 million per year he made in the NBA may be enough to feed his family, but not enough to pay off his luxury yacht. I bet he wishes he would've signed those $5 million mid-level exception contracts that teams were offering him, I guess it's no longer "a level beneath which Sprewell would stoop or kneel!" (an actual quote from his agent).
Football really needs to start.
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