Benched

The Box Score

I don't know about you, but I like imagining...it's fun for me. Since you're here, you might as well play too...indulge me for a few minutes. Imagine that you are a starter for a Division 1 college basketball team. You're on a full scholarship, your meals, books, room and board cost a combined 0 dollars a year, you get all the other perks associated with being a student-athlete at pretty much any level (read: bitches), and you may well be on the road to an NBA career making millions of dollars to do what you've been doing for fun since you could hold a ball and walk at the same time. Your life is pretty good, right?

Well, it's apparently not all it's talked up to be...you see, here in Philly at our own Drexel University, two real-life people lived that exact scenario and decided it wasn't good enough. Jamie Harris and Kevin Phillip, juniors at the school, were arrested after turning themselves in on armed robbery charges. They and an accomplice (a friend of the victim) ran a triangle offense inside the apartment of a fellow student, breaking in, brandishing guns and getting away with...drumroll, please...an iPhone! Awesome job, you criminal masterminds, you...now instead of careers in pro basketball, you get to be first pick in the prison basketball game every time...what an honor!

It was said by the late philosopher Christopher Wallace that the 2 ways to make it were to "slang crack rock or have a wicked jump shot"...it seems these guys wanted the worst of both worlds. I mean, let's be serious, all jokes aside...what the fuck!? Just when I thought I had seen the summit of human stupidity, something like this comes along. (It's almost like the sons of active NFL coach getting arrested on drug distribution charges or something...oh wait...shoutout to the Reid family!) Why in the world would somebody with so much to lose risk everything for a phone that doesn't even have Flash? There are people who would risk going to jail to GET a scholarship to a major university...these hoop geniuses are not only forfeiting them, but going to jail anyway. I don't care how you score that one, that's a loss.

They caught all of them on tape entering and exiting the building in the process of their flagrant foul, so they were shit out of luck anyway, but it didn't even have to get that far. I know if I had been in their Nikes, the only shots I would have been taking would have been at practice and parties...not in the streets trying to play gangster with some dickhead who was gonna get us all caught anyway. Oh, I didn't mention that part? Yeah, the accomplice, who orchestrated the robbery, gave police a key piece of evidence when he stopped for a slice of pizza at the shop next door immediately afterwards and paid with his FUCKING DEBIT CARD! (No, they can't track that at all...not with your account number and address and shit...no way. I thought these people were in college...that's a Drexel education hard at work...) Of course, he snitched before they could even get the cuffs on him.

You know what...fuck the "why"...I don't think we'll ever know that one. My new question is "who?" Who did this benefit? The players? *pssh*...it's pretty clear that their lives failed like their team in last year's Tournament (Hey, Ci!) and they'll be taking a 5-10 year timeout. The student who engineered this epic failure? Well, he did get a slice of pizza and an iPhone out of the deal, but he's gonna pay for it with years of fruit cups and monitored phone calls. Drexel? Nope...this kind of thing is like an anti-commercial for the place...3 years of their schooling bounced off these assholes like a ball off hardwood. Nope, looks like the only person who reaped any kind of benefit is the folk like me who get to point and laugh at them...which, honestly, is a slam dunk for me. (lol sorry...)