OPINION:
Thank you, UMBC, for reminding of those March Madness moments.
It’s not the cutting down of the nets by the tournament champions that we remember.
It’s the moments like Friday night, when a small, nerdy school like University of Maryland, Baltimore County wakes up the country with a stunning upset win over the tournament’s overall No. 1, Virginia.
Those are the moments we collect in our emotional scrapbooks, when everyone is a UMBC alum. We fall in love, however briefly, with the stories of those young men and marvel at the odds they overcame to enter into our lives for that one, shining moment.
Sometimes it’s a Cinderella like UMBC that steps into that spotlight — intensified in today’s social media atmosphere — and sometimes it’s a gritty bunch like LSU in 2006 who captured America’s imagination with a stunning upset of top-ranked Duke and the villainous J. J. Redick on their way to the Final Four.
It wasn’t the unprecedented victory that UMBC pulled off Friday night, but it was the one that defined the 2006 tournament, and put the spotlight on the Tigers players — led by an engaging big man nicknamed “Big Baby” — Glen Davis.
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“The face of this year’s tournament has morphed from the irascible scowl of Gonzaga’s Adam Morrison to Davis’s irrepressible grin, complete with braces and exaggerated winks …. he can seem to be overcompensating, the class clown still looking for acceptance. But the 20-year-old Davis is adored as much as any athlete in Baton Rouge,” the New York Times wrote during the 2006 tournament.
Now, while UMBC, its players, school president, chess clubs and nerdy profile became the face of this year’s tournament, the news broke that just a few miles up the road from the Catonsville, Maryland, campus, the face of that 2006 tournament was now on a mug shot from his arrest in February on seven counts of marijuana possession and distribution.
Davis was reportedly staying in an Aberdeen, Maryland, hotel when the hotel owner, after smelling the odor of weed coming from Davis’ room, demanded to come in and was told to “F—- off, according to report from WMAR-TV in Baltimore. He refused to open the door, so the owner called the police, who responded and asked to search the room. According to the report, Davis gave them written permission to do so.
What they found was a quarter-pound of marijuana, an estimated $92,000 in cash and allegedly a ledger that police believe included names and amounts of money owed in marijuana deals.
One shining moment, indeed.
A lawyer supposedly representing Davis told WMAR that his client was innocent. But that wasn’t enough for the class clown. When the news broke of his arrest — while college basketball was celebrating UMBC’s win that lit up the country — Davis released a video on his Instagram account that will hardly help his case.
Appearing to be flying in a private jet, Davis told everyone that he would be fine, while eating Popeye’s fried chicken and sitting next to a briefcase full of cash, with his 2008 Boston Celtics NBA championship ring on top of the money, with a message to his fans that the cash was obtained legally with “a whole lot of jump shots.”
That video has since been removed.
My hope is that the one shining moment from this weekend is that Davis is innocent — that the story we learned about Big Baby in 2006 hasn’t been warped and twisted into a dark moment.
This is part of the March Madness story we learned about Glen Davis in 2006 — he had spent time in foster homes because his mother suffered from drug addiction and spent time in prison. “For the majority of her life, she’s been fighting demons,” Davis told the Denver Post. “She has gone through so much in her life you couldn’t even imagine. You couldn’t even dream up what she went through. She showed so much character and so much heart in the things she sacrificed for us. Through the midst of (her drug addiction), she still had a love for her kids. She still supported us, no matter what she did.
“(My life) was like a maze,” Davis said. “I was lucky to make the right turn at the right time,” he said. “At first, I was headed down paths that were not good, where you’re either dead or you’re in jail. I decided to make the right turn at the right time because of what I wanted.”
Sometimes time is not kind to those we fall in love with in March in those shining moments.
“But time is short
“and the road is long
“in the blinking of an eye
“ah that moment’s gone.”
⦁ Thom Loverro hosts his weekly podcast “Cigars & Curveballs” Wednesdays available on iTunes, Google Play and the reVolver podcast network.
• Thom Loverro can be reached at tloverro@washingtontimes.com.
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