In a move that should surprise no one, Tamir
Goodman has decided not to go to Maryland. He left a voice mail for
Gary Williams, telling him.
It's our opinion that Maryland has treated Tamir Goodman shabbily. We
hope wherever he ends up he's happy and gets to do the one thing he really wants
to do, which is just to play some basketball. Maryland's loss. Maybe they can
replace him with another guy who racks up parking tickets or something. Bob
Gibbons has a kind article about this also.
The
Baltimore Sun has what is closest to the real story, where Tamir says they
yelled at his mother but fortunately for Gary Williams he doesn't say what was
yelled at his mother. Ken Rosenthal has a lot more details and indicts
Gary's character pretty thoroughly, to which we can only add: what a total
and utter schmuck this man is. The saddest part for Gary (but the best
part for Tamir) is that a seventeen year old kid has more character in his
little finger than Gary has in his entire body.
Oh well, grist for the Crazies (hint, hint).
In one of the truly stupid takes on this fiasco, Insiders Report suggested
that Tamir
"bailed" on Maryland, but if you read the Baltimore Sun's article
linked above, they are somewhat sanitized versions of the truth.Â
They quote Al Siebert, who posted on www.heartlandhoops.com,Â
as saying that Tamir had no left hand. On the tape we saw, Tamir had no
trouble going left, and in fact had no problem switching hands in mid-air to
shoot left handed. Siebert is an ex-coach; apparently there is a reason
for that. On the other hand, he's not nearly as big a jerk as Clark Francis, who
suggested that
Tamir was simply faking an injury this summer so no one could see a supposed
lack of talent. Much like Gary "Schmuck" Williams, Francis really
showed his character on that one.
Incidentally, now that Mike Sullivan, Kurt O'Neill, and Bob Gibbons are
onboard with rivalnet, leaving Brick Oettinger and Clark Francis, who we no
longer take seriously after his disgraceful comments about Goodman, as the
only major gurus, so-called, outside of rivalnet. Good new for rivalnet,
but perhaps less for the rest of the world. In one of the columns above,
the author knows a great deal more than he is willing to say about this whole
mess, which is too bad. We're assuming he is unwilling to destroy his
sources at Maryland, but now that rivalnet has such a strong position in
recruiting, will all their sites follow such a practice? We hope not. It's
not the end of the world, of course; recruiting poop is fairly limited in terms
of what's worth reading and also the size of the audience, but what if say
Maryland issues a veiled threat to rivalnet sites about how they wish to be
covered? Not to say that anything of the sort has happened, but the potential
dynamic is worth mentioning.