Another day another NBA player is talking about Ray Rice on Twitter and coming off poorly. After Joel Embiid‘s terrible attempt at levity in the Rice fiasco, Paul George spent time defending Ray Rice this morning on Twitter before deleting the offending tweets and apologizing to women everywhere.
Here’s what George wrote, by way of Pro Basketball Talk:
I don’t condone hittin women or think it’s coo BUT if SHE ain’t trippin then I ain’t trippin.. Lets keep it movin lol let that man play!—
Paul George (@Yg_Trece) September 11, 2014I get it tho NFL.. You just don’t hit women!—
Paul George (@Yg_Trece) September 11, 2014If you in a relationship and a woman hit you first and attacking YOU.. Then you obviously ain’t beatin HER. Homie made A bad choice! #StayUp—
Paul George (@Yg_Trece) September 11, 2014
George quickly found out how glaringly wrong he was with his pronouncements. The victims of violent crime aren’t allowed to pass judgement on those who facilitated that violence for obvious reasons.
In domestic violence situations, the threat of further bullying and brutality at the hands of their spouse certainly plays a role in them keeping quiet. But the event in question is often so traumatic and stressful the victims would rather put it behind them rather than drudge up the awful memories for prosecutors, and especially for the media.
That’s why our heart goes out to Janay Rice and her family because she has to re-live that awful night over and over again in the media, and deal with people victimizing her further by criticizing her for not standing up against her now-husband. It’s an awful cycle played out for most of the country to witness.
As for George’s last tweet that was deleted, it could be interpreted a number of different ways. Hopefully he’s saying Rice made a big mistake, even if Janay Rice (formerly Palmer) initiated the fighting. It can be construed other ways, too, like how since his then-fiancé starting the hitting, she’s obviously not being beaten on a regular basis. Or that if a woman hits a man, it’s OK to hit back, regardless of how much more damaging a retaliatory strike might be. We’d like to think the best of Paul, and conclude that he’s just making uninformed snap judgements without looking at it from all sides.
He DID apologize and delete the offending tweets:
Let me apologize to the women and to the VICTIMS of domestic violence people my intent was not to downplay the situation..
— Paul George (@Yg_Trece) September 11, 2014
This tweet is still up, and while we agree police brutality is still a huge problem in this country, we’re not too sure how it’s related to Rice or this case:
Keep it 100 lets act on this police violence like we actin on this Ray Rice case! Stay strong homie !
— Paul George (@Yg_Trece) September 11, 2014
Former NBA player, Damien Wilkins, who currently plays in the Puerto Rican BSN League, did a good job explaining why George’s tweets were so offensive, asking George and others who don’t think what Ray Rice did was a big deal to place their sister in Janay Rice’s situation:
I wonder if you'll be telling "homie" to "stay strong" if that was your sister, homie…
— Damien Wilkins (@dwilkins3000) September 11, 2014
George built up a lot of goodwill among fans after he went down with that brutal broken league during a USA Basketball scrimmage to tune up for the FIBA World Cup. We just hope these tweets don’t undo all the respect he’s built within the NBA and among the fans.
What do you think?
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