Jalen Rose, ESPN Analyst and owner of the third highest scoring average in Chicago Bulls history (minimum 100 games) clarified a situation for us yesterday. Rose was on media conference call to discuss the NBA Playoffs, and there was some urgent pressing news that needed to be uncovered.
First off, apologies for the asterisks in the headline. We don’t believe words should be censored here, but the various news sites that pick up our RSS feed tend to disagree. Also, Google and Google News, we’re told, supposedly doesn’t take too kindly to putting the words “pussy” and “bitch” in your headline.
This issue came up on March 11th. Christian Laettner was doing a media conference call himself, in promotion of the “I Hate Christian Laettner” documentary. Laettner answered a question about his relationship with Jalen Rose and the Fab 5. In his response, Laettner brought up how the Fab 5 called him a pussy and a bitch in the 30 for 30, and he was shocked that ESPN was okay with airing this.
(An ESPN Vice President was also on this conference call and he chimed in, making the situation all the more compelling).
The full Q&A audio with Laettner is embedded below. The discussion about being called “a pussy” and “a bitch” by the Michigan guys happens at the 5:50 mark. However, you really should listen to the whole thing, because the entire question and answer session is phenomenal.
“People criticize me for being tough on my teammates,” Laettner said on SVP and Rusillo. “But no one criticizes people who make a movie and are calling people bitches and pussies.”
Here’s the original clip from the 30 for 30 on the Michigan freshmen:
So I asked Jalen Rose on the call yesterday, have you spoken with Christian Laettner since the comments he made about the Fab Five documentary?
Jalen Rose (transcript via ESPN Media Zone):
Me and Christian are brothers through the National Basketball Retired Players Association, and coincidentally we had an appearance together during the Final Four and we literally laughed that people think what they saw in the Fab Five documentary, then what they saw in the Duke documentaries, because they did one with ACL and then now they did one with ESPN. But either way, that just shows how, I guess, good those documentaries are because people still think that we have any animosity or hostilities towards each other. We’re old and washed up; we don’t care about that stuff. They kicked our butt. I know it. I just owned it. That’s all.
So there are zero hard feelings towards him or Coach K. I talked to Grant and Christian. They wanted me to participate in the doc so I did, so I was happy to be able to do so.
So there you go. Hatchet buried. As Laettner stressed in the documentary, sports isn’t always touchy-feely, goody-goody. You hear a lot of things that you wouldn’t hear in church; because it’s intense and competitive. Sometimes your opponent will call you a pussy. Sometimes your opponent will call you a bitch.
It’s just a natural part of the game.
Paul M. Banks owns, operates and writes The Sports Bank.net, which is partnered with Fox Sports Digital. Banks, a former writer for the Washington Times, currently contributes to the Chicago Tribune RedEye edition. He also appears regularly on numerous sports talk radio stations all across the country.
Follow him on Twitter (@paulmbanks) and Instagram (@paulmbanks)