The exact moment that Jason Whitlock stopped mattering

Presented without comment - other than SAS’s reaction not being surprising - here’s what Whitlock wrote.

He (or his ghostwriter) claims he received a full basketball scholarship from Winston-Salem State after a one-day tryout in February 1988. A former Winston-Salem State basketball player allegedly drove Smith from New York to North Carolina for the tryout after Smith impressed the former player during a one-on-one matchup on a playground court. According to his book, Smith arrived on campus on a Saturday, checked into a hotel, and woke up Sunday morning to participate in a scrimmage.

Before I go farther, let me add that Smith played one year of high school basketball. He rode the bench for the 1985-86 Thomas Edison High team as a senior. In the book, he says his one season of prep basketball ended abruptly when he failed a single assignment in a single class. He didn’t fail the class. He failed an assignment and was removed from the team.

After his abbreviated high school career, Smith matriculated to Fashion Institute of Technology College of New York. It’s a school for women and men interested in joining the fashion industry. Smith enrolled so he could play on FIT’s junior college basketball team.

He rode the bench at FIT, too. In his book, Smith described a work, school, basketball, and commute schedule that sounded humanly impossible.

So, after riding the bench in high school for a year, riding the bench at a junior college for a year, and impressing an old player on a New York playground, Smith earned a tryout in front of Winston-Salem State’s legendary coach Clarence “Big House” Gaines. And this tryout happened on a Sunday, at the end of the regular season.

Not many college teams hold scrimmages on a Sunday, one day after playing an important regular season game on a Saturday. But that’s how important it was for Big House to get a glimpse of a 6-foot-1, 150-pound guard with no high school or junior college accomplishments.

According to Smith’s account, he knocked down 17 straight shots in the scrimmage, and Big House offered him a full scholarship immediately after the practice.

This is laughable. In Big House’s own memoir, he frequently complained about his limited budget at WSSU. The historically black Division II program was not flush with cash and a dozen scholarships to toss around. We’re supposed to believe that Gaines gave one to a frail kid he saw play for an hour?

I cannot appropriately do justice to the far-fetched story Smith painted in “Straight Shooter.” Smith has struggled to explain it on national TV. In November 2022, on the set of “NBA Countdown” with Malia Andrews, Jalen Rose, and J.J. Redick, ESPN ran a graphic of Smith, Rose, and Redick’s senior year stats. Smith allegedly averaged 1.5 points per game. He said he scored so few points because he played in just one game after a knee injury.

You can’t average 1.5 points in one game. It’s impossible.

In August 2023, on his podcast show, Smith backtracked and said he never played a single game at WSSU. It’s a bizarre contention, especially considering Smith is listed on a 1991 WSSU stat sheet as having played nine games.

Is that a different Stephen Smith?

 

Wow.
Assuming Whitlock accurately quoted SAS's autobiography, I see something else intriguing. Unless rules were different in Division II back then, schools couldn't include a prospect in practice or make a scholarship offer on the basis of a "tryout" including active players.

There is evidence that Smith was on the team. He's in uniform in a standard mug shot in the 1990-91 yearbook. That publication does not have individual statistics listed, however.

 

He hasn't been a journalist in 10 years, I'm not so sure he's being accurate.

 

20 years.

 

I’m sure Whitlock’s favorite part was calling FIT “a school for women and men”.

 

A couple of thoughts.

One, "Big House" might have ignored a few rules at times. He would not have been the first coach to do so. Smith wound up on the basketball team somehow.

Second, what is Whitlock disputing? Smith did not receive a scholarship? He wound up on the basketball team somehow. At HBCU schools how many of the kids on teams are on financial aid? I received full rides to college for two years because my father lost his job. Are the schools putting together some combination of financial aid and partial scholarships? A serious question.

Smith said he was a bench warmer in high school. a bench warmer in junior college and a bench warmer in college. Whitlock quotes Smith as saying he played one game after he was hurt. Whitlock says he played nine games total. Were eight of the games before he was hurt?

So Whitlock is making lots of insinuations but offers very little evidence. And the parts of the story that are known seem to check out.

 

Whitlock wrote about SAS said he scored just a few points because he only played one game after a knee injury, and how it’s impossible to score 1.5 points in one game.

The problem with what Whitlock wrote with that portion is he’s assuming that SAS only played one game due to the injury; not playing one game after the injury. SAS could have played more games before the injury, or played in the game that he sustained the injury.

If he played one game, got hurt during the game, and didn’t score in that game, then played the one game afterward and scored 3 points, there’s the 1.5 ppg.

 

The problem is Whitlock without evidence -- and asking others to send him evidence -- is sitting in the bowels taking the lamest of shots at SAS on the top rung. I'm sorry, but when SAS in that video called Whitlock "you bitch," I was pretty floored (and amused). Wonder if he had to run that particular vein of his screed past Norby or Rob King. I'm not a fan of SAS's overall on-air persona, but I don't know anyone in the industry who has dealt with him personally who says he's a bad dude. When you remove his cartoonish veneer, he seems chill and self-effacing. Whitlock can go fuck.

 

In Jason's mind, Ralph Wiley passed him the baton.

ESPN.com: Page 2 : Remembering Ralph Wiley

Paving the path | From Jason Whitlock

Ralph Wiley, my friend, my mentor, counseled me often. Once, I said something that Ralph found profound. We were discussing the dangers of black people buying into the Chris Rock notion that there are black people and there are n------. I told Ralph, if it's true, then black people better go to bed every night and thank God for n------.

"We owe everything to n------, Ralph. We wouldn't have our jobs if it wasn't for n------. The only reason we have these fancy mainstream media jobs now is because poor, ghetto black folks rioted after Martin was murdered. The inner cities were on fire, and it was too damn hot for white reporters to go in the 'hood and find out what was going on. So they gave notebooks and pens to the black janitors and told them to go find out what was going on. We owe our jobs to the ghetto folks who were mad as hell, refused to take it anymore and started tossing around Molotov Cocktails. Poor blacks do all the dirty work and middle class blacks reap the benefits. All the real freedom fighters die early, go to jail and never get to enjoy the freedom they won."

That's how I feel about Ralph. He threw Molotov Cocktails. And because he did, guys like yours truly, Wilbon, Rhoden, Stephen A. Smith, Jeffri Chadiha, Jim Trotter, Monte Poole, Shaun Powell, Bryan Burwell, J.A. Adande, Drew Sharp, John Smallwood, Tim Smith, Phil Taylor, Terrance Harris, Clarence Hill, Terry Foster and countless others have an easier road to travel.

Jason Whitlock is a columnist for the Kansas City Star and Page 2 and is a regular commentator on ESPN's "The Sports Reporters."​

 

Clears throat, checks mic, takes a deep breath ...

"I don't give a fuck about this idiotic made-for-TV feud."

Walks off.

 

You might be missing out. Beyond the amusing elements for anyone familiar professionally or in passing with these two, they are a unique portal onto what black journalism can be, maybe shouldn’t be, and never should have been. If you know the backgrounds between these two and watch SAS’s Youtube rant (where he admittedly buried the lede), then I think there’s a lot to break down and learn about how poisonous Whitlock has been to journalists of all stripes. I certainly wasn’t aware of Whitlock begging the likes of Isiah Thomas to beseech SAS to give Whitlock another chance and to contribute to Black Grantland, aka, Undefeated. Jemelle Hill, Howard Bryant, etc., all turned him down too. That interests me as a former sports journalist.

 

Round...4?...tonight!