Help. Today help has such a broad meaning. Usually help means that you assist someone so that they can succeed. In relation to sports law, the concept of help has gone astrew.
O.J. needed help hiding evidence and seeming innocent, Michael Vick needed help covering up the dog fighting, and countless major league baseball players have needed help in proving that they do not do steroids. Sure this”help” will get them off of the hook, and prove them not guilty, but in the long run is it really helping them?
When you were young, there were so many things that your parents could have made easier by helping you or guiding you through, but then you would not learn anything. Their help would have made it so you needed help every time you perform that act. Sometimes learning things the hard way is more help than learning things the easy way.
So when lawyers help their clients, and the judges let the professional atheletes or teams off of the hook because their lawyers “helped” them, it is taking the easy way out. No lesson is learned, and no help was provided.
Damon Stoudamire and Rasheed Wallace were two NBA stars for the Portland Trailblazers…and they were indeed blazers. On a road trip they got caught with marijuana stored in tin foil as they went through a metal detector at the airport. After the incident, and a few weeks in court, all that happened was a suspension for a couple of games; no fine, no misdemeanor, just a slap on the hand. After the season the same thing happened again. Rasheed was caught driving under the influence of alcohol, and he was also in possession of marijuana. This time Rasheed got a DUI. The first time there was no lesson learned because there were virtually no consequences, nothing to teach Rasheed a lesson. He figured he has untouchable, and the law did not apply to him. Coincidentally, Rasheed has never been found in possession of marijuana or driving under the influence of alcohol since his run in with the law. Maybe, just maybe, if there was a punishment the first time, he would not have done it again.
People thought that they were helping Stoudamire and Wallace by letting them off, but all it really did was feed their habit and poor behavior. This is too prevalent in sports; the athletes get “help”, and never suffer the consequences that they deserve.
Next time an athlete gets in trouble, we should all consider what we think HELP means.
