You
Can’t Trust Everyone
You have everything you want, you are at the top of your
sport, and every college in the nation wants you to play for their institution.
This was the life of highly touted recruit, Damien Johnson, the best high
school basketball player in the nation. Damien was from Philadelphia,
Pennsylvania and played at Lower Merion High School, the same school that
produced Kobe Bryant. He stood at 6’8” and 225 lbs. and played small
forward/power forward, but what set him apart from the rest of the players in
the nation was his overall skill set at the position he played. Damien was not
your traditional small forward/power forward combination. He could handle and
pass the ball like a point guard, shoot like a shooting guard, slash to the
basket like a small forward, plus he rebounded and had post moves like power
forwards and centers. He was the complete package, a once in a generation type
player who could change the face of any program. The only thing that could
slow down his career was the same problem that haunted all of the top talent
before him: the people that surrounded him.
It was the last semester of Damien’s senior year of high
school and his team was number one in the state of Pennsylvania with the
playoffs right around the corner. His recruiting was on full tilt and he was
receiving phone calls, letters, and message at a hectic pace as coaches from
North Carolina, Duke, Kentucky, Kansas, and Oklahoma were fighting for him to sign with their program for the next year. The thing that comes
with big programs fighting for his commitment is the boosters or donors of
those programs willing to push money towards players to give them more
motivation to sign with their school. If a player accepts money of any sum from
anyone, then their eligibility is revoked and they cannot play collegiate
sports anymore. Damien knew of this and had turned down many offers of large
amounts of money before; he did not want to risk his collegiate career because
of a dumb decision to accept money that he knew he would make down the line in
the NBA.
Damien’s
family was not the wealthiest, but made enough money to live comfortably. They
lived in a decent-size house; it was enough to hold Damien, his little brother,
plus their parents. There was not enough worry about money that would tempt
Damien to take any sum of money offered to him by any donor. The playoffs were
now in full effect as Damien and Lower Merion were the overall number one seed
in the playoffs, looking to win a state championship. Damien dominated
throughout the playoffs, averaging 25 points per game, 8 rebounds per game, and
7 assist per game, which warranted more attention from everyone including not only
coaches, but media outlets, such as ESPN and Fox Sports. He was being compared
to Lebron James and Magic Johnson, two of the greatest players to ever play the
game of basketball.
As his popularity grew and the offers rained in, he reminded his parents and his brother not to accept any money of any amount or it would jeopardize his basketball career. As the semester was coming to an end, National Signing Day was upon Damien. It was his time to make his decision on where he wanted to attend college. He had trimmed down his list to three schools: Villanova, Oklahoma and Michigan St. Damien ended up choosing Villanova which was his hometown school and he wanted to become the “Hometown Hero.”
As his popularity grew and the offers rained in, he reminded his parents and his brother not to accept any money of any amount or it would jeopardize his basketball career. As the semester was coming to an end, National Signing Day was upon Damien. It was his time to make his decision on where he wanted to attend college. He had trimmed down his list to three schools: Villanova, Oklahoma and Michigan St. Damien ended up choosing Villanova which was his hometown school and he wanted to become the “Hometown Hero.”
A
couple of weeks had passed since National Signing Day, and Damien was getting
everything squared away before he left to join the team at Villanova at the beginning
of the summer. This is when the worst possible news headed Damien’s family way;
his father had been laid off at his job. This was such a big blow to his family’s
living situation as they would be living off of just one salary instead of two.
Somehow, this news caught air and got to a Villanova booster, a long time
family friend of Damien’s father. He called Damien’s father and asked for him
to meet with him to “talk.” They met up
at a bar in downtown Philadelphia and talked for a while, but towards the end of
the conversation, the booster pulled out a check worth one hundred thousand
dollars and handed it to Damien’s father. He knew it was wrong to accept this
money, but he knew that he could help his family for a good amount of time
while he looked for a new job. Damien’s father took the check with him and thanked
his friend for the money.
Damien
got to Villanova and began summer workouts with the team to prepare for his
freshman season. He impressed the coaching staff with everything he did, on and
off the court. They were preparing him to start this upcoming season and be the
star of the program. The compliance office caught word of Damien’s father accepting
the booster’s check, and held an investigation, in which they found the wrongdoing of Damien’s father. This made Damien ineligible to ever compete in
collegiate basketball or any collegiate sports. The person who Damien was
supposed to trust the most is the one who damaged him the most in the end.
Villanova got pushed back into a major setback that affected them down the
road. The moral of the story is that no matter whom it is you cannot always
trust the people in your corner.
Author Note:
My story is based off using information from The Stupid Monkeys, which is a story from Jakata Tales. I wanted to use this story because when I read The Stupid Monkeys, it gave me ideas for a story of trust and asking someone to do something for you, but they mess it up. This is something I am familiar with and I know that it can happen to college athletes when their family members take extra benefits from someone else and ruin the career of the athlete. That is how I developed the story of Damien, as he trusted his father to do something very simple and easy, but he still messed up. The Stupid Monkeys: The gardener wanted to spend the holiday in town with his friends, so he thought he could give the task of watering the king's trees to the monkeys who lived there. He asked the Chief of the Monkey's if they could help him out and they agreed. He told the monkeys to give the trees just enough water, but not too much when the sun went down. As the sun went down, the monkeys started to water the trees, but did not know how to figure out when to stop watering the trees. They pulled up each tree to see which ones had long roots and had short roots to know how much water to give them, which, in return, killed the trees. The monkey had a simple task of watering the trees, but did not know when they had given the trees enough water for them to live, so they pulled up the trees and they ended up dying. My goal was to draw the readers in by connecting to the character as each of us can relate to in which he did everything the right way only to be torn down by someone he had put a large amount of trust in.
Bibliography:
The Stupid Monkeys, Ellen C. Babbitt (1922)
