Remember when everyone made a huge deal about Kyle Lowry taking a bathroom break, people who didn’t know him or the team began writing that he quit on the Toronto Raptors and his teammates, and then he responded by going off in back-to-back games and summarily shutting them up and making the whole thing seem a farce?
Well, here we go again.
Steve Simmons of the Toronto Sun penned a column last night with the headline “Carroll, Joseph put reps on line with late-night casino visit.” The Cliff notes are that late Tuesday night, the night before Game 5 (or “early” Wednesday for the pedantic crowd, since it was “just before 2”), DeMarre Carroll and Cory Joseph were spotted at a casino in downtown Cleveland. He goes on to write that both players put their reputations on the line by doing so. He asks “what if it was symptomatic of something else? ” and “Players not necessarily prepared? Players not taking their jobs seriously?”
The column is problematic. It ignores a lot of realities about life in the NBA, asks some pretty broad questions based solely on what time players were in a certain place, and generally reads like a giant “I’m not saying, I’m just saying.”
It is, to be clear from the outset, not a great look. Like with Lowry choosing to say he was “decompressing,” Carroll and Joseph didn’t do themselves any favors being out late in a public place, and neither turned in particularly strong games Wednesday (although using that as a smoking gun of some impropriety means the other 11 Raptors who dressed were also out and up to no good). You could probably go as far as to say the players should have known better, to which I’d respond: Why?
There’s nothing wrong here beyond the unfortunate optics of them being noticed, and that sleuthing being used as a post-facto reason the team lost.
Look, I don’t know the NBA lifestyle, but there are some things we know about players from the outside. They have routines, for one. Most of them are night owls, as their work night often ends late. Putting those two things together, it stands to reason that players would want to stay up late on non-gamedays to remain in their routine (when I used to work night shifts as a summer student at a factory, for example, I would try to stay on the same sleep schedule on weekends). There’s also the matter of the game being at 8:30 p.m. the next day. Being up at 2 a.m. that day is the equivalent of Joe Lunchbox (not a fake name, he’s a friend) going for drinks after work the day prior. Can you do your job at 8 a.m. Friday if you play a hand of blackjack or have a beer at 5 p.m. on Thursday?
On top of that, these are adults. Carroll and Joseph have been through the grind of seasons and the grind of postseasons. They know their bodies and their sleep schedules, and with an 11 a.m. shootaround the next day, they still could have gotten eight hours of sleep, plus the very common game-day nap. The casino is attached to the team hotel, so they very literally could have been spotted on their way to getting a longer night’s sleep than I’ve gotten since the playoffs started. I’m not an elite professional athlete, of course, but Carroll and Joseph weren’t exactly burning the midnight oil relative to their work schedule. I’m sure other players do the same kind of things, they just aren’t out publicly or aren’t spotted.
Even that fundamental misunderstanding of an NBA player’s life and routine and the suggestion that a late night for a 9-to-5er has the same impact here is irresponsible enough.
What’s worse, Simmons’ entire premise is that Carroll and Joseph have staked their reputations. To the fans who maybe don’t think the way I do, or think much about it at all, or who take the word of reporters as truth, yes, Carroll and Joseph’s reputation may be harmed here. By the columnist, not the action.
We’re talking about Joseph, the Spurs-bred point guard who begged for D-League time to improve as a rookie, who constantly suits up for his country despite the rigors of NBA seasons, and who has genuinely become one of the most beloved and hard-working players on the team (the “last guy off the court” mantle on the team is a tough battle between Joseph and Norman Powell). In Carroll, we’re talking about a player who was shot in the ankle, diagnosed with liver disease, was cut multiple times, fought through myriad injuries, and still kept pushing to where he is today, one of the league’s best and toughest wing defenders. (And, if you want to talk reputation, we’re talking about a writer who’s always been kind and helpful to me but also has this and this and this and this on his ledger.)
The worst part? Simmons didn’t even bother to ask Carroll or Joseph for an explanation.”Deadline pressure meant neither Carroll or Joseph were available post-game to be asked about their indiscretion,” he wrote. Look, I’m hardly a veteran of the beat, but I’ve seen multiple reporters able to file on deadline, then add quotes for color after the fact (otherwise, what’s the point of post-game media availability?). Carroll spoke to media after the game. I saw both players before the game, and they were ostensibly available then, too. It wouldn’t have been difficult to double back to ask the question, or even ask it before the game (when, you know, you’d be calling the whole “was this an issue” shot in the air rather than after the fact, once there was a better story to tell).
“I didn’t know that,” Casey said when asked. “This has nothing to do with curfew. This isn’t why we lost…This is the NBA, they’re grown men. These are grown men. These things happen.”
Right. These are grown men. In the NBA. Who have routines and sleep patterns and work schedules that can’t just be assumed to be the same as the everyday worker. They have surely done this before. They know their bodies. And Carroll and Joseph, whose reputations suggest anything but what the column implies about them, probably want to, you know, win.
They were out late near the hotel with no indication they were drinking, with enough time to get eight-hour sleeps before shootaround, when their bodies are designed to peak a full 18 or 19 hours later. This is literally nothing, and I feel dirty for having to write it.
