I Can't Believe I'm Actually Defending an Athlete

It's a familiar situation for drivers everywhere. Your sitting behind the wheel of your car in an obnoxiously large mall parking lot with frustrating small room to drive. As your attempting to make a squeezed left turn to exit the lot, some moronic woman decides to figure out the problem with her blackberry right in front of you. You honk your horn and she glares at you. Then some righteous prick trying to get some comes to her defense. It's two on one, and you have no way of adequately defending yourself. Somehow you've been made the enemy. Maybe you'd leave her alone if she bought a phone equal to her own technological capabilities. But she didn't. So now you sit there in your car, looking like the impatient fool who cannot wait five seconds for some woman.

Richard Hamilton is sitting behind that wheel and John Kuester is that raunchily dressed female holding an idiotically colored blackberry. On the surface, Kuester has exemplified the perfect coach, holding his ground against team mutiny and not sacrificing his principles. When over half his team refused to attend a team shootaround, he did not play them. When asked about Rip in the media, his answers are clean cut and careful. He has refrained from, as many athletes and coaches do not, using the media as tool for player ridicule and humiliation.

But let's go back to the beginning of this whole mess for a second. Rip plays the game with less selfish-flare than anyone in the NBA. Constant off-ball movement. Mid-range jump shooting. Hard defense. The same sermon every dad tries, and fails, to teach his son. It's far more entertaining to pull your best Rajon Rondo impression than Jason Kidd. No one whose playing pickup in the park screams "Kidd!" when they pass the ball from the top of the key to the wing. When Kobe Bryant is posting up from the three point line, backing down his defender and hitting a contested fadeaway from 20 feet away, who wants to take a simple, one dribble pull-up? I don't mean to play the whole "back in my day the game was played right" card. This generation is my day and I like it. No matter what blockades we throw in the way, the NBA has and will continue to evolve. But as of now, an NBA team still needs more Richard Hamiltons than Kobe Bryants: Excellent players playing within their roles.

The point is that Richard Hamilton is a member of a dying breed, cast off by NBA evolution. The guy who's happy filling his specific role. The guy who values championships, not winning. The guy who has his cake but doesn't eat it. Don't get me wrong. I'm all for players colluding and signing wherever they want. Use your leverage, you're the star. But it's nice to see the Richard Hamiltons of the world every now and then.

And then John Kuester happened. Maybe he and Rip fought, maybe they didn't. But do you punish a guy with an outstanding reputation by benching him for the rest of the season? Maybe they were going to trade him. But don't players only sit out the game before a trade occurs? Detroit is in the middle of an epic power play. If Rip really wanted to, he could simply run over the blackberry woman and Carmeloed his way to wherever he wanted. But he didn't, and now that random prick (Joe Dumars) and our lovely woman completely turned the tables, leaving Rip in an impossible situation. Leave and he's out-muscled. Stay quiet and he's miserable.

Although Rip's hand is almost completely revealed, there's still one card left in his hand that will ultimately work in his favor. No matter how this situation turns out, Hamilton has years of reputation to back his every move. Had this been Rasheed Wallace, Kuester would have been praised Paul Westphal on Demarcus Cousins style. In an attempt to assert his own reign, Kuester accidentally ruined any chance of survival. In the court of public opinion, he has already lost. . If a coach hopes to retain his job middling success, he must either pull a long winning streak out of his bag of tricks or take a strong stand against player turbulence/trouble. You know, avoid Gilbert Arenas-like situations. But Rip Hamilton, of all people, is not above the team. Anyone whose game is based off-ball movement has the team concept naturally built in.

Don't get me wrong. Today's athletes are selfish, obnoxious, alarmingly stupid and for the most part undeserving of their financial benefits. But I have to defend Rip here. Maybe he did overreact by honking his horn at Kuester and his disregard for common courtesy. But to relegate him to the end of the bench and effectively shorten his already culminating career seems a bit harsh.