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This Is No Fluke: HS Coach & Educator
Responds To A Sportswriter--(June 9, 2001)

We sometimes come across letters-to-the-editor which are worthy of passing along, and this is one of them.   Many readers may have seen LA Times sportswriter Diane Pucin's article in the LA Times, really an opinion piece, in which she wrote about Vince Carter returning to the University of North Carolina the day before an NBA playoff game to receive his college diploma.  If you want to catch it, it's still in the LA Times archives and available at this link.

We generally love the stuff that Dianne writes.  It's entertaining, timely and usually she's got a great sensibility for the game, and the human element in her stories.  But this is one time we have to agree with Fluke Fluker, the long-time former head boys' basketball coach at LA City Section Chatsworth HS, who is now the AD at the school.  He read Dianne's column and felt compelled to write in response. 

Among the more choice tidbits contained in Pucin's piece were the following:

It is a fine thing Carter has done, getting his degree from North Carolina even after he has made enough money to last his lifetime and several more. His mother should be proud, of her son and of herself, that Carter stuck to it, lived up to a promise and completed his course work.

So it will seem mean-spirited to say, but what Carter did this weekend was not worthy of a role model.

In attaining the degree, in reading the books, writing the papers, passing the tests, Carter upheld his responsibility. In leaving his team Saturday, in flying to Chapel Hill, in taking even the slightest chance that bad weather or a bad airplane part could have kept him from arriving in Philadelphia in time for Game 7 of the NBA Eastern Conference semifinals, he was irresponsible.

Again, you can read the whole article at the link above, but it's really filled with more of the same, examples intended to demonstrate that Carter was irresponsible and seemingly implying that he was responsible for his team's elimination from the playoffs (of course, in hindsight, we now know that there's no way to stop The Answer. . . but we digress). 

Fluke Fluker is a basketball coach, he's an athletic director and he's devoted his life to teaching young men and women the value of sports.  But he's also an educator first.  He wrote in to the LA Times to express his displeasure and disagreement with the opinions expressed by Diane Pucin, and the LA Times published his Letter To The Editor today (it's at this link).  But on the off chance that the link will expire someday (and it will) we're also posting it:

Someone once said if you live long enough you will see and hear it all. I don't know if that is an argument for longevity or euthanasia.

Reading the article on the front sports page of the L.A. Times about Vince Carter ["Selfish Carter Has A Few Things To Learn", LA Times, May 22, 2001]  attending his college graduation before an NBA playoff game made me lean toward the latter. For Diane Pucin to call the symbolic gesture of Carter going to his well-earned graduation at University of North Carolina as an act of "irresponsible selfishness" and that we should "dishonor him for being a bad employee" and "not worthy of being a role model" are the most shallow, knee-jerk and ignorant statements I have heard in a long time. 

Those statements reflect mottos of athletics-before-academics, game-before-graduation and franchise-before-family plague that hollows out our communities. It is what I and many other coaches, teachers, athletic directors and parents, be they black, white or anything else, fight against every day.

Carter is an elite professional basketball player and I guarantee you that he played that decisive game against Philadelphia with more energy and vigor than had he not gone to his graduation; primarily because his conscience was free to do so. I have never met Carter, but if I did I would shake his hand until his arm falls off. Unfortunately I have witnessed hundreds of children sacrifice their academic priorities for their athletic dreams. Too many young, bright African-American children look at the word student-athlete with dyslexia, putting the word athlete ahead of student. It hurts me to hear the criticism that Carter is being faced with. Sometimes even courageous acts are misinterpreted as acts of selfishness.

Sure, Carter could have waited until the summer or asked someone to videotape the ceremony as Pucin suggested, but who is she, or anyone else for that matter, to place what value attending a college graduation has on a family. Maybe Pucin doesn't realize historically the hundreds of African-Americans who were lynched trying to educate themselves and others. 

Maybe one of my students, who idolizes Carter, might now put his own education a little higher on his priority list. If Carter's actions encourage just one, maybe my son or yours, I say "thanks." Thanks for putting education and your family before all else. It took 30 years for the media to understand the "selfish" gesture made by Tommie Smith and John Carlos during the 1968 Mexico Olympics. It took 20 years for society to understand Muhammad Ali's "selfish" refusal to be drafted. I guess I should give society time to understand Carter's "selfish act." 

One out of every four African-American males are in jail, on parole or awaiting trial. African-American males make up 6% of the nation's population yet 60% of the prison population. In layman's terms, more African-Americans graduated from the state pen than from Penn State. Carter's accomplishments should be celebrated, even if it might've put his championship at risk.  

The Brown v. Board of Education decision of 1956 allowed me, my children and their children to legally receive an equal opportunity for an education. Thirty years after that decision my father, with a fifth-grade education, watched me graduate from college. He couldn't even read the words on the diploma but he knew what it meant more than the people who wrote it.

Simply put, it means a new type of freedom. No championship, no Olympic glory and no amount of money could ever give my father or me that satisfaction. Can you understand that Diane Pucin?

FLUKE FLUKER
Athletic Director, Chatsworth High

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