I was recommended to read Wright Thompson’s story about 73-year-old basketball player Ken Mink. It’s a fascinating piece, mainly because Thompson walks that line of being fascinated by his subject, but also, quite wary at the same time: “I wonder if they’ve lost touch with reality,” he writes, at one point. Then Thompson calls Mink “the James Dean of Lees College.” Intriguing stuff. Enjoy.
MINK: Sinks two from the foul line…but is he a maniac/fraud/weirdo/liar? Or a hero!
Matt Davis is mostly a writer, photographer, editor, publisher, entrepreneur and communications professional. In the renaissance tradition he occasionally also turns his hand to sewing, acting, poetry, filmmaking and so on. But when he dies, he would like to be judged solely on the quality of the relationships he enjoyed throughout the course of his life with other people. Because he feels, in the end, that those are the only point in being alive to do anything.
Matt, Do you wonder just a little bit why Wright Thompson would spend so much time delving into Ken’s past ie: jobs, divorce, relationships with family members? There are lies, misquotes and exaggerations beyond the pale in his made up I want the dirt on this guy story that is very sophomoric for a so called senior writer for ESPN. It took him several months to write a super market tabloid story that most editors would have considered poor journalism, and yes Wright, some people did sit up and take notice of you and your opinion. It was so obvious that is what he was seeking but I don’t believe that he graduated from the top 60% of his class and most of his tale was his opinion not facts. Ken has many fine attributes that Wright would not point out, why do you suppose that was? I could go on but I think that I got my point across.
Matt:
It is a shame that so many journalists are so careless that they perpetuate inaccuracies. I have just been made aware of your commentary and feel compelled to try to straighten out the misinformation you have conveyed to your readers.
Perhaps a closer look at the problem is in order:
I was never declared academically ineligible at Roane State. The ruling issued by the NJCAA stated I was declared ineligible because our school, basically our basketball coach, did not inform the NJCAA in time that I was taking an extra online course during the first semester. There was nothing wrong with taking the Strayer University course and it was completed during the first semester as required (with a passing grade of B). NJCAA originally indicated the course was not completed within the first semester, but Roane State provided proof that was not the case. Then NJCAA said I was ineligible because I had dropped my Spanish class and thus fell below the 12 hours required for continued eligibility. Roane State provided information that showed I had not dropped Spanish at all. Since I was in danger of failing Spanish I picked up the additional three-hour first semester online course to make sure I was going to pass the required 12 hours needed for second semester eligibility. I did just that. My school records showed I passed 12 hours with better than a 2.0 grade point average and was eligible by all school academic rules. Then the NJCAA came back with the word that the coach had not advised NJCAA early enough about the online course and so I was declared ineligible. Totally nothing to do with academic ineligibility. Coach Nesbit said in his 29 years as a college coach he had never heard of the NJCAA requirement to notify them each time a player took an online course and he specifically asked the NJCAA to provide him evidence of such a rule. They could only provide conflicting information. Unfortunately, some media people never got it and the misinformation was perpetuated by people such as Wright Thompson and yourself.
As to the Wright Thompson ESPN the Magazine story itself, there was numerous errors and inaccuracies, deliberately or otherwise. Several players and coaches in the past week have advised me that Wright either made up or misquoted them in his story.
My comments in response to Mr. Thompson included:
“While I admire your research and tenacity I am disappointed in many aspects of your story. Using your point of view I suppose that makes you happy — you probably view anything I disagree with as just another example of my ‘whining.’
It appears to me that you have used out of context quotes and misinformation to suit your own hypothesis, fitting your portrayal of me as a lying, non-conformist egotistical rebel of a guy who views himself as always being right about whatever position he takes.
You paint me as an egotistical guy who will never accept blame for whatever happens to me and that I should be more honest with myself and quit ‘whining.’
When I got kicked off the Lees College team for a prank which I did not commit (which you were later able to confirm my innocence), should I not have made a fuss over that and defended my innocence? Is that just an example of my whining?
And then when I was kicked off the Roane State team because of an administrative technicality, through no fault of my own, should I have just shrugged it off? When hit with gross unfairness I think anyone would find reason to complain about it. But when I do it is, in your view, just more “whining?” Why didn’t you point out that I had met all the academic rules of Roane State and was eligible by any and all school standards? Why didn’t you quote Coach Nesbit about his own feelings about how I had been a victim of administrative injustice?
Why didn’t you use any quotes from players Camille Ngon a Ngon, Chase Bell or Steve Burrough, all of whom I heard tell you a lot of favorable things about how they viewed me as a basketball player. Instead, I was painted as some kind of hoops buffoon, a caricature in shorts. I admitted I was struggling early on at practice. Thankfully, you did mix in some later comments from Coach Stanley and others about how I had progressed in ability as the season wore on. All of which offset and made irrelevant any of that early-season stuff and only, in my view, confused readers as part of your discombobulated tale,
How could you misspell my wife’s name throughout (it is Emilia, not Emelia).
Now I understand why you were going to such extremes in backgrounding this story. You wanted to write a feature that differed from the other stories (which centered on the significant relevant facts of my return to college basketball after a 53-year absence). You apparently wanted a controversial story that would provide you an exclusive view (accuracy and fairness be damned). It appears to me you were searching for as many skeletons as you could find to help support the framework of the picture you were trying to paint — quoting out of context excerpts from my divorce proceedings, checking resumes, using critical prejudicial quotes from my estranged daughters and none from my son (only one indirect quote). And even calling the producer of an old TV show to verify my comments about writing a script for the show (I told you I had videotapes of those shows, proving what I had to say, but you ignored those), using an unnamed source to indicate I had been fired from a job for possibly forging letters (when I told you, and you could have corroborated this through numerous sources, that the publisher in meeting with the staff to announce my firing told them my leaving had nothing to do with any alleged forgery). Instead, you took a paparazzi approach and pried into every nook and cranny of my private life to try to find a way to discredit me. This kind of journalism is more suited for supermarket tabloid publications such as The National Enquirer or Star.
You further intimated I had lied about writing magazine articles and yet I still have copies of those magazines containing the articles I mentioned. Why did you not ask to see those? Is that a fair journalistic approach?
You said I once barged into a women’s basketball practice because I had an inflated ego and just had the right to be intrusive ‘because I am Ken Mink.’ You never asked me about that. But the fact is I asked the women’s coach if I could shoot at a side goal while she worked with her team on the other end of the court. There was no problem, except one time a stray ball bounced onto the court where they were playing. That happened all the time when the men were running full court practice and guys were shooting on side goals. Yet, you added it as just another brush stroke in your distorted painting.
You quoted me as saying I had caused a player injury and was gloating about how I ‘knocked him on his ass.’ I have no idea where you got that. I never said such a thing. I was, in fact, once floored in a practice session and never “whined” about it. I got up and played on with nothing said.
You made a big deal of the fact that I ‘forgot’ a semester final exam, when in fact I thought the exam was on a different day. I was allowed to take the final exam at a later date, just as any other student in that class would have been allowed to do. But you made it sound like I was asking for preferential treatment.
There are other examples of incorrect, misleading or distorted segments of your story, but I guess you would regard my pointing them out as just more ‘whining’ on my part. But I would at least give you a passing grade of ‘D’ for your story — not the kind of work that would get on any journalistic honor roll, however.
Maybe you should whine about it.
–Ken Mink