WHY IS BRANDON MILLER STILL PLAYING WHEN A YOUNG MOTHER IS DEAD?
As Alabama advances, maybe headed to a national title, an otherwise fun NCAA tournament is haunted by the prominence of a freshman star who transported the handgun allegedly used in a murder
If it were you or me or someone else, we’d be rotting in a county jail, denied bail. Think about this: A text message arrives with an urgent directive to drive to a fraught nightlife district, where an argument was occurring, with an order to transport a handgun located in the back seat of your car. You should have said no. You should have said you didn’t know a handgun was there. You should have sensed trouble and told him to reclaim the firearm the next day … far, far away.
It isn’t your gun, and you’ll never touch it. But you did know it was there the entire ride, as the undeniable courier, until you arrived at the scene … and experienced a horror. You were there when the firearm was retrieved from the back seat and gunfire erupted in a street shootout, bullets pelting your windshield. You watched as the trigger was pulled, allegedly by a friend of the man who texted you, on the very gun you delivered in your car. You were a witness as Jamea Jonae Harris, the 23-year-old mother of a five-year-old boy, was shot to death near the famed football stadium at the University of Alabama.
Are you an accessory to a murder, contributing to a crime without directly committing it? Did you aid and abet? A case could be made by a prosecutor. There are people doing hard time in prisons who’ve been convicted for less.
But because Brandon Miller is the biggest man in Tuscaloosa and the best player in college basketball, a savior who might bring a national championship to Nick Saban U., he carries on as a central figure in the NCAA tournament. The ex-teammate who messaged Miller to bring the handgun, Darius Miles, has been charged with capital murder. So has Miles’ friend, Michael Lynn Davis, who is alleged to have fired the shots that struck Harris as a passenger in another car. Miller was at the crime scene, as was another player in Alabama’s regular playing rotation, Jaden Bradley. At the very least, a university that cared about accountability should have suspended both freshmen after Miles — a scholarship player with a uniform number and an active role — and Davis were indicted by a grand jury.
In the context of death and ammunition, it shouldn’t be a factor that Miller wasn’t charged with a crime. Neither was Memphis Grizzlies superstar Ja Morant, but that didn’t stop the NBA from issuing an eight-game suspension without pay after he flashed a handgun in a strip club and broadcasted it on Instagram Live. Nor was former Cy Young Award winner Trevor Bauer, who initially was suspended 324 games and since has been railroaded out of Major League Baseball for rough-sex acts that the Los Angeles County district attorney’s office didn’t view as sexual assault. On a college campus, where educating students about right and wrong should be paramount in any high-profile punishment decision, the standards are expected to be higher.
Instead, the Alabama athletic factory has redefined the meaning of March Madness, turning the tournament into a debacle. Coach Nate Oats and athletic director Greg Byrne continue to lean on the February statement of a hometown deputy district attorney, Paula Whitley, who said of Miller, “There’s nothing we could charge him with.” How disgraceful and irresponsible of the university to prioritize its championship mission over safety and simple dignity. As Miller is accompanied in arenas and hotels by an armed security guard, the Crimson Tide circus heads to the South Regional at Louisville’s KFC Yum! Center, where the collective taste only will be acrid. If the raw symbolism isn’t uncomfortable enough — an armed guard protecting the player who transported a murder weapon, in a nation torn apart by gun control conflict — consider the danger Miller presents as his team continues to advance. Are fans safe? Are players safe? Is he safe? What happens when throngs descend upon Houston for the Final Four, which apparently is Alabama’s destiny with only San Diego State and the Creighton-Princeton winner in the way this weekend.
“If you guys saw some of what I’ve seen sent his way, I think you would understand why that’s the case,” Oats said of the security presence.
This is the same coach who originally said Miller was in the “wrong place at the wrong time” at the murder scene, before apologizing for his “choice of words.” Oats, 48, is a former high-school math teacher riding the fast track to national prominence and salaried riches based on his recruiting prowess, his loyalty to families and their sons. You might say Harris’ death has provided him a grisly platform for how his program operates. He praises and defends Miller at every opportunity, saying last weekend, “He’s a really good kid that I think’s done a really good job of handling a heartbreaking situation that we all know is very tough. So, you know, we just see him show his mental toughness throughout the year. I think we’ve all seen it.”
Mental toughness? That is coach-speak at a school that is smelling a championship, not realizing it always would have an asterisk shaped like a handgun. Assuming Miller goes on to a long, productive NBA career as a 6-9, 200-pound wing — he has jumped to No. 2 on many draft boards, behind only Victor Wembanyama — this hovering cloud will be part of his legacy. Oats is the one who convinced the administration to keep Miller and Bradley in uniform. “The fact never changed that we were going by what the police told us, that they were cooperating witnesses,” Oats told the Associated Press. “So based on everything we know — and we’re not investigators, we’re going on what the professional investigators have told us — Brandon and Jaden never broke any laws. They never violated any school policies. They’re fully cooperating witnesses and have been truthful from the minute they met with the police that day. So I’m not sure what they would have been suspended for.”
Oh, for transporting an alleged eventual murder weapon in a car, for starters. Even if Oats had suspended Miller for a game or two, he at least would have made a statement about the dignity and stability of his program. Rather, crimson is the color of blood. “I never lose sight of the fact that a family has lost one of their loved ones that night,” the coach said. If so, that realization should have guided his ruling. He should step aside from his tournament duties, with a few days off before Friday, and speak to Kelvin Heard, Harris’ stepfather, who always will be appalled by Oats’ comment that Miller “did nothing wrong.”
“He brought a gun to where a person was murdered and he did nothing wrong?” Heard told AL.com. “Jamea could still be alive. … This season is stained in Jamea’s blood. After what this coach said, for us as a family, this season is stained in the blood of Jamea Harris and it’s not ever washing out. Coach Oats crossed the line. He said they prayed at practice. They weren’t praying for Jamea. They were praying for their own players.”
The Brandon Miller entanglement is about to become our national disruption. What’s supposed to be the most fun month on the sports calendar — will we ever forget Fairleigh Dickinson toppling the 7-4 Zach Edey tree? — very much could be swallowed by Alabama’s chilling ignorance. Right now, I’d rather focus on why Arkansas coach Eric Musselman stripped off his shirt and went topless, when he clearly isn’t much of a muscle man. And Drew Timme’s mustache, or lack thereof. Taking advantage of a deal for his name, image and likeness, Gonzaga’s charismatic senior forward shaved his facial hair for a Pringles commercial. Pushing potato chips is one of his 20 NIL agreements, including one with Beats wireless headphones, natural gifts for his appreciative teammates.
“The mustache is my moneymaker around this time of year,” Timme said. “So yeah, I shaved.”
March, thankfully, still can make us smile.
Until Brandon Miller shows up in another building with his security guard, for another nationally televised Alabama showcase, two months after he should have stayed home and maybe saved a young mother’s life.
###
Jay Mariotti, called “without question the most impacting Chicago sportswriter of the past quarter-century,’’ writes general sports columns for Substack while appearing on some of the 1,678,498 podcasts and shows in production today. He is an accomplished columnist, TV panelist and talk/podcast host. Living in Los Angeles, he gravitated by osmosis to film projects.