Durant...

    I’ve found myself getting caught up in the Durant nonsense and checking constantly to see what choice he’s made.  Is he going to pick a new team?  Is he going back to the Thunder?  For how many years?  This is completely absurd.  I was having a conversation with a friend of mine today about Derrick Rose and I was saying that I really like him as a player and he seems like a good guy and then I remembered he’s facing gang rape charges. 

     I make a concerted effort not to make any judgments about something in the news until there are actual facts out there to be read and digested.  Virtually nothing has been leaked about the Derek Rose case so far.  It’s purely a TMZ type thing and reputable news outlets have released very little information.  Thus, I feel it’s stupid for me to make any kind of assessment of what I think may or may not have happened.  Why should I take any side when I don’t have any actual facts about the case and I don’t know any of the involved parties?  I try to keep an open mind until there is more information out there.  Recently, Michael Gira of the Swans was accused by Larkin Grimm of rape.  There was an instant uproar and all across the Internet and people took sides.  Most of what I read in that case involved believing the accuser.  When these things become news we know very little initially and it seems like in that case a rape most likely did not occur.  But it’s important to remember that I don’t know either the accused or the accuser and I am not a policeman and I cannot possibly have all the relevant facts in the case and thus I truly cannot even fathom what actually happened between these two (to me) strangers.  There are plenty of other examples where things go the opposite way, where the consensus does not believe the woman who is rightfully making an accusation (see Cosby, Bill).  

     Coming back to Rose this means, that for me, I can’t possibly know what to think about what happened with a woman he knew in a hotel room and what was consensual and what was not.  I choose to keep an open mind and I’m rooting for the guy from a basketball standpoint but I’m prepared that at any point I could find that I was rooting for a bad person.  I work in a bar in NYC and I can truly say that you can never know another person completely.  You might think someone is totally cool and then you discover they’ve been stealing or you might think someone sucks and then you find out there a kind intelligent human being.  People are a constant surprise.  

     So back to Durant, he’ll sign with a team any moment now and it really won’t affect my life anymore right now then it will in a few days when there is more information out there about what he was thinking and why.  The real rush is artificially created by news outlets which all want to have the hottest and fastest take on everything.  They want you to get caught up and to make judgments and predictions before anyone else does.  Everyone wants to be the first to break a news story but this really makes no sense to me.  I’ll patiently read someone who has some interesting and well thought out things to say about facts he or she has taken the time to gather thank you… Oh and by the way let's remember that we're all anticipating the decision of a very young man who is determining where he is going to spend the next years (year?) with his family.  It ain't life or death and it's his right to live and work anywhere he wants.