Nothing about the effort was noble or satisfying, which sums up much of college sports these days.
Grinnell College's Jack Taylor (3) is congratulated by teammates after scoring 138 points on Tuesday.
By DAVID STEELE
Thanks, Jack Taylor!
Not just because this is Thanksgiving. You score 138 points in a basketball game — not a pee-wee league game, not high school, not even against the Toronto Raptors, but in a real, live, official grown-up game — and you get big thanks any day of the year.
Way to bogart your way into the brains of every sports-watcher on the planet, not only unexpectedly, but totally anonymously. Who knew you before late, late Tuesday night? How many people ever scrutinized the box score of a Grinnell College game? Has Faith Baptist Bible College, your victims/opponents, ever been mentioned on CNN, much less had clips of any of its sporting events shown every hour all day long? Does the NCAA really have a Division III? Are they trying to lure Maryland and Rutgers over there, too?
On the other hand, Jack …
Would you ever have dreamed that so many people in this country would despise you? Maybe not you, but what you did, how you did it, who let you do it, and what it did to the game we love, the values it represents, and the very fabric of our society?
You and your coach have made a mockery of sportsmanship, Jack; you might have picked up on that by now. Not how you wanted to introduce yourself to the world. Then again, Kobe, Melo and the Durantula love you. Didn’t see that coming when you pulled on your jersey Tuesday night, I’ll bet.
Now, you get to weigh those conflicting reactions for the rest of today, the weekend, and probably your life. Enjoy the holidays, travel safe.
If it makes you feel any better, Jack — and before we go any further, what a shock that someone who takes 108 shots in a 40-minute game is named “Jack” — everybody else is weighing those conflicts, too. A 138-point game gives you a lot to chew on. It’s an impulsive thrill to see it, the way Wilt Chamberlain’s 100-point game probably was, but also the way the Ron Artest Palace brawl was.
It’s horrifying, it’s dangerous, it’s not what the sport is all about, it appeals to our lowest, most basic, most primitive emotions. But holy … just show one more replay, just to see exactly how out of control it got.
I can’t tear myself away from it. And I’ve spent lots of time in my writing life condemning the very same spectacle when it happens in high school, where they actually are supposed to be teaching values. Dajuan Wagner, Cheryl Miller, Lisa Leslie, Cedrick Hensley. Players and coaches conspiring to get some cheap attention against overmatched opponents, exploiting the luck of a once-in-a-lifetime talent landing in the right place at the right time.
The circumstances surrounding these “events” are tough to admire. The opposing team in Leslie’s game had to forfeit at halftime when too many players fouled out. Wagner’s team kept pressing full-court until the final buzzer. Hensley’s coach called a newspaper reporter to complain about what he thought was a lack of coverage of the feat.
Yeah, Jack, you’re getting a few of those elements here. Your coach, David Arsenault, apparently loves this stuff; he hooked up a current teammate, Griffin Lentsch, for an 89-point game a year ago. Nope, nobody heard about that. Sure sounds like you were his revenge for that oversight, Jack. Your friend Griffin … you have to wonder how he feels about that. Especially since, in your historic game, he only took three shots.
I’m trying, once again, to be offended by that. Oops, failed again.
Because … 138 points!
You don’t really need defending on this one. For one thing, it’s college, and this kind of thing never happens at this level; the last time anyone cracked 100 was nearly 59 years ago. For another, the word “defense” doesn’t belong anywhere near this story. Plus, it’s not as if Faith Baptist Bible curled up in the fetal position, or had to ask for volunteers in the stands to field a team.
The final score was 174-104, emphasis on the 104. And emphasis on the 70 tossed up by Faith Baptist’s David Larson.
That pace must have been like UNLV vs. Loyola Marymount, on crack. You and Larson at 20 paces must have been like that epic Bird-vs.-’Nique fourth quarter, except for a whole game, with shorter guys, dropped into the middle of Iowa and recorded on a cell phone. Chuckers’ Paradise.
Oh, and folks are complaining about your assist total, Jack, or lack thereof. Zero. Yeah, pal, you’re not making your teammates better. Their team won by 70 points, they’re the talk of the sports world in the middle of NFL, NBA, college football and college basketball seasons, but they’re supposed to be mad because you weren’t hooking them up.
If you had passed to them, Jack, and they did anything else besides pass it right back, Coach Arsenault should’ve made them all run the steps until they were stepping on their own lungs. What were his options? “OK, Jack’s got 112, but he’s missed three in a row and the lead’s down to 53. How about a little floor balance, fellas? What have I been teaching you?”
For what it’s worth, the other Warriors didn’t waste a lot of time waiting for Wilt to give the rock back to them in the fourth quarter that night 50 years ago in Hershey. They knew what was going on. Same with Kobe the night he scored 81 (against Toronto, for those who didn’t get that earlier reference). Shooters gotta shoot. Sometimes they gotta shoot 108 times. Sometimes 71 of those gotta be from three-point territory.
And shooters love shooters, which is why, Jack, you shouldn’t be ashamed to listen to Kobe and Co. and tune everyone else out lecturing you about sportsmanship. Yes, this was an abomination, a transparent gimmick, a perversion of what basketball, at its core, is about.
But basketball, and all games, aren’t worth playing if you never get to have exceptions like this one.
So absorb Kobe’s lesson from this, and take heed, because you will never again see his words approved so heartily in this space:
“Would people be celebrating me if I scored 138 points? You know how it is, some people would, some people wouldn’t,” Bryant said, as relayed by the Los Angeles Times. “They can all kiss my ... as I’m sure (Taylor) feels the same way. If you score 138 points, you kind of have a license to tell people to ... off.”
Jack, your license is valid for at least this day. Have fun. Don’t let anyone ruin it. And once again, thank you.