🏀 Avery responds to article titled "Alabama will be better off without Colin Sexton"

[18Champs]

 

[JoshB]

One comment about this tourney and how it relates to Bama and I'm through with Bama basketball until next season. Like it or lump it, I really don't care. When you look at the upsets and the Cinderellas, they all seem to have one thing in common: shooters. Little guys. Medium sized guys. Slow guys. They shoot. And lots of them are still playing. Until Bama recruits and signs shooters, they have absolutely no shot at advancing very far in the tournament. And I'm talking about guys who can do it all the time, for real, not twice a season.

Alabama had the most athletic team on the court Saturday. They were longer. They were faster. They were taller. Two or three of them might be in the NBA some day. The Tide got drilled. Jay Wright provided nice lip service the day before the game. Thanks for the compliments, coach. Be honest next time. You saw Bama's deficiencies all over the place.

If you watched UMBC last night, you saw their point guard absolutely killing it. Bama would have never recruited him. Maybe he plays better defense than walk-on Lawson Schaffer. Who knows? My favorite team doesn't give scholarships to guys who aren't athletic, tall, and fast, even if they can play basketball.

If everyone but Sexton returns next season and Bama's new player is as good as the pundits claim, Bama will be better. They will enter the dance ranked higher. But which team that can shoot will take them down in round 2 or the Sweet 16 though? Some under-ranked, undersized, underdog with shooters, that's who. Or some higher ranked team that marvels at our athleticism while they fire away at long range and then celebrates after making 16 threes.

It's the way the game has evolved (or devolved in my opinion). Partly because its more "exciting" to score 150 points, partly because the rule changes have made it almost impossible to play physically on defense without getting called for a million fouls. It's been a slower evolution in the college game because teams were still able to win with dominant defense and big men but it's been that way in the NBA for quite awhile now. Now, you see these teams with 5-6 sharpshooters out there just chucking up threes Steph Curry style and not giving a damn about defense, which is where these 120-115 type scores come from. That's where the game is headed.

 

[18Champs]

Collin Sexton is a star freshman point guard for the University of Alabama’s basketball team. He’s so good that although Oklahoma’s Trae Young has a bigger name, Sexton will probably be picked ahead of him in the NBA draft. And while Alabama had an up-and-down season this year, that they even made it to the NCAA tournament was largely due to Sexton’s play in the SEC Tournament.

Anyway, they lost Saturday to Villanova, a team that’s just much better than them. In a weekend full of upsets, Villanova handling Alabama was one of the few outcomes that most people rightly predicted. During the game, while Alabama was down 26 points, Sexton was called for a technical foul for taunting Villanova’s Mikal Bridges. Obviously, this was not a good look, but 19-year-olds do dumb shit sometimes, and this was far from an unforgivable act.

It was also last weekend that I learned that 1) Joseph Goodman exists, 2) Joseph Goodman writes things that can be read on the internet and 3) Joseph Goodman is a living icon. If Earth is around for another 10,000 years or so, and if people are still writing about sports on the internet then, you still won’t find another take worse than the one Joseph Goodman wrote on Collin Sexton.

Like, remember that scene from The Matrix when Neo gets shot in the hallway and comes back to life and finally realizes he’s the One and sees everything in code and stops the bullets in midair and Agent Smith rushes him and Neo starts doing some no-look, one-handed kung fu shit while making a face like “These hoes won’t hold me back!” and then dives into Agent Smith’s chest? Well, this piece is Joesph Goodman diving into the internet’s chest.

It starts with something fact-ish and smarmy, a narrative device to let everyone know that Goodman is coming from a rational and sober place. JOSEPH GOODMAN IS A MOTHERFUCKING ADULT:

Collin Sexton’s final action as a college basketball player was getting hit with a technical foul for taunting a superior opponent while trailing by 26 points.​

Then he begins his descent into full dog-whistling schoolmarm:

Not exactly the last impression someone wants to make before turning pro, and probably not the type of image the University of Alabama wants to project to the rest of the country after making it back to the NCAA Tournament for the first time since 2012.​

I’m sure the state of Alabama has some bigger concerns about the image they wish to project to the rest of the country, but maybe that’s just me.

Also, Alabama made it back to the NCAA Tournament for the first time since 2012 BECAUSE OF COLLIN SEXTON, THE STAR FRESHMAN POINT GUARD YOU’RE ABOUT TO PLAY MAGA YAHTZEE WITH IN THIS FUCKING “COLUMN,” YOU DICKWAD! Goodman goes on:

Classless.​

Clueless.​

Unacceptable.​

Holy shit! Goodman brought out the big guns. Whenever you compose entire paragraphs with just one word, you mean business. Someone call the manager because some serious white business is about to go down. Joseph Goodman is here to write shitty takes and chew bubble gum, and he’s out of bubble gum:

So, Alabama’s one-and-done point guard took a seat on the bench and watched the final few minutes of his brief college career from the sidelines. Credit to Alabama coach Avery Johnson for at least getting that right on Saturday in Pittsburgh. From the bench, Sexton got a good look at what it must feel like to watch Alabama pummel, say, Coastal Carolina inside Bryant-Denny Stadium on a Saturday in the fall.​

Only worse.​

​

At least Nick Saban is nice enough not to run up the score on the sacrificial lambs of college football. Villanova isn’t wiring $1.5 million into Alabama’s bank account on Monday morning, either.​

You probably have to be a seasoned reader of shitty sports takes to see what’s happening here. Although the athletes in power-conference football and basketball are predominately black, basketball is generally regarded as a blacker sport. One of the reasons for this distinction is that basketball generally allows for more individual freedom and improvisation than football does. And by creating this useless juxtaposition of Collin Sexton and the University of Alabama’s football team, Goodman is reminding the readers that football in general and Nick Saban (Alabama’s football coach) specifically wouldn’t allow such indecency.

Joseph Goodman is a pillowcase filled with blueberries.

Goodman follows with some more bullshit and then (finally) gets to the climax. From this point on, we should probably just start calling “excessive foreplay” “pulling a Joseph Goodman”:

One, Alabama should be better this time next year.​

​

Yes, Sexton will be gone, but that doesn’t seem like such a bad thing after watching him against a truly special team. Alabama wants to win a national championship in basketball. That doesn’t happen with a 6-foot-2 point guard who wants to play isolation basketball when things get tough.​

​

Sexton wouldn’t say definitively that he was going pro after Alabama’s loss, but his body language screamed it at the end of regulation.​

Ah yes. We all know that you can’t win national championships with a player talented and driven and confident enough to score 38 points in a game where his team only had three players. Nope. A college basketball team with national-championship aspirations can’t use players like that. Maybe if Collin Sexton wants to help the team, he’d be better served selling hot sausages in the tailgate instead of playing on the court.

The rest of the piece is dumb and stupid and shitty and full of dog whistles and just reiterates what Goodman said already. The irony here is that as wrong as Goodman is, he might be right about Alabama. Next year, when Collin Sexton is in the NBA, they might be even better. But they’ll be better because the returning players will be better, with another year to grow and gel. Not because their best player is gone.

Anyway, Joseph Goodman is a columnist for Alabama Media Group. He’s on Twitter @JoeGoodmanJr. And I know all of this because it’s attached to the end of the piece, and it’s the only part that makes any sense. Talk about burying the lede!

 

[TerryP]

Here's an example of Goodman "doing his job."

 

[JoseyWalesTheOutlaw]

Goodman is lucky that the Bham News (owned by yankee fishwrapper company Advance Publication) needs beatwriters. He is pathetic at best.

 

[TerryP]

I don't buy this for a single second; bad headline...SMH.

 

[RTB X Bot]

 

[TerryP]

^^ In case you missed the original article ^^

Alabama will be better without Collin Sexton

 

[TUSKtimes]

Now debate begins: Is Collin Sexton best basketball player in Alabama history?

Collin Sexton was and will remain an untapped source of talent for the Crimson Tide. We never got his best as a collegiate player, nor shall we. We did get an emotional roller coaster ride that many on here best described as Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde. One fact I do know, Collin is never going to be perceived as the best that has played at the Capstone regardless of how he matures in the NBA. If he becomes the next Kyrie Irving, that will still never be the guy that played ball here.

 

[JoseyWalesTheOutlaw]

Sexton brought excitement to the program this year as well as some great BB. I am not a big fan of the one and done thing but this player did a pretty good job his one year. The player at LSU showed how NOT to be a one and done player. Avery has his work cutout for him this coming season. Perhaps Dazon Ingram will improve. JMO but his body language said he was resentful of Sexton.

 

[planomateo]

Well done Coach! Way to back your player publically and call out the reporter for this nonsense.

Goodman accomplished one thing, confirmed he's an asshat. Not to mention, throwing a softball that a basketball coach could crush.

 

[TerryP]

Now debate begins: Is Collin Sexton best basketball player in Alabama history?

I don't think there's a debate he's brought more positive attention to the basketball program than any other player in Alabama history. It's as likely he'll bring more positive attention to the state of Alabama as a player than any other. That's a tall order against some (Horry comes to mind) but easy to do when we consider other NBA players from the state.