The Mess at Alabama Won’t Go Away Quietly

The 24–4 Crimson Tide are going to face heavy scrutiny, particularly if they make what appears to be a likely men’s NCAA tournament run.

In the course of one week, Alabama men’s basketball has become what Alabama football is accustomed to being: a national lightning rod. But this has less to do with relentless winning than with program accountability.

The Crimson Tide will be a massive flashpoint come March Madness, when they might be favored to win the national championship. They will be booed, taunted, debated—and defended by some. This is going to be a wild, dramatic, heated ride for as long as it lasts.

For better or worse, Alabama is rolling ahead without any apparent plans to suspend star player Brandon Miller or fellow starter Jaden Bradley (whose presence during the killing of Jamea Harris remains underexamined). Coach Nate Oats’s public comments this week have been callous and clumsy, necessitating clarifications. A statement by Miller’s lawyer about his client’s role in the shooting is being cited as gospel, though it’s notable what the statement doesn’t say.

This all unspooled from a hearing Tuesday, when a Tuscaloosa detective dropped a bombshell that the school had not disclosed: Superstar Miller had Darius Miles’s gun in his car and drove it to Miles in the early-morning hours of Jan. 15. Miles turned the gun over to his friend and alleged trigger man Michael Davis, who said he was drunk at the time; a wild shootout ensued that killed Harris. The hearing also revealed that Bradley was at the scene and that surveillance video reportedly showed him, Miles and Davis approaching the car of the victim and her boyfriend before gunfire erupted.

Neither Miller nor Bradley face criminal charges at this point. But to say they exercised poor judgment is a gross understatement. There were opportunities to change the tragic outcome of a verbal confrontation, to keep it from escalating into a situation that could have seen more people killed if circumstances had been even slightly different. Neither player appeared to notify police after the shooting, and the university appeared to be similarly passive in its handling of the situation—other than the obvious step of kicking Miles out of school after he was charged with capital murder.

Yet nobody else missed a minute of playing time related to the incident. In terms of simple optics and damage control, Oats and Alabama could have acknowledged the full level of participation by their players and suspended Miller and Bradley for a few games after learning of their involvement. Then this situation might largely be in the rearview mirror by now. But the two played at Vanderbilt fewer than 72 hours after the killing and have played ever since.

Miller is a national Player of the Year candidate and is probably the top NBA prospect in college basketball. Alabama couldn’t have gotten to 24–4 and No. 2 in the country without him. Nevertheless, it could have easily endured a few games without him in January, had it chosen to act. While laws might not have been  broken by him or Bradley, and perhaps not even team rules, they certainly did not handle a life-and-death situation in a manner that coaches everywhere would want to see from their players. They were part of the problem.

Oats’s initial dismissal of the magnitude of Miller’s involvement—“wrong spot at the wrong time”—was embarrassing. The school subsequently noted the statement from Miller’s attorney, Bill Standridge, as part of the explanation for him playing Wednesday against South Carolina. (With chants of “Lock him up” audible in South Carolina’s arena, Miller scored 41 points, including the tying basket at the end of regulation and the winning basket in overtime.)

But Standridge’s skillful statement omits a few things and leaves holes in his client’s timeline. After parting ways with Miles and Davis as they entered a bar because, Miller said, the line to get in was too long, where did he go? With whom? For how long? Where was he when the text arrived from Miles telling Miller that he wanted his gun?

Standridge said that Miller “had no knowledge of any intent to use the weapon,” but asking for a gun at roughly 1:40 a.m. after coming out of a bar could only lead to dangerous situations and potentially tragic outcomes.

This does not appear to be a situation where Miles and Davis simply needed a ride, since Bradley was there with his vehicle. They wanted Miller to arrive because Miles’s gun was in the car. And Miller must have been aware that the gun was in the car, or his attorney would have noted otherwise in the statement.

It may be a long time before we get answers to all the lingering questions from that night. Or we might never get them. But Alabama is going to face some serious scrutiny through the stretch run of the regular season, into the Southeastern Conference tournament in early March, and into the Big Dance beyond that.

This is Alabama’s best chance to make the Final Four and win a national championship, two things it has never done in basketball. But that quest will be fraught with great controversy.

College basketball has had an endless series of scandals and hot-button issues, but they usually pertain to relatively unserious circumstances: buying recruits, hotheaded coaches, bad officiating. This is an altogether different realm. This isn’t LSU rolling with Will “Strong-Ass Offer” Wade or Kansas standing by Bill Self amid federal and NCAA inquiries.

If you thought it was mildly objectionable watching Self cut down the Final Four nets while under investigation, imagine what it might look and sound like in Houston in April if it’s Brandon Miller and Nate Oats going up the ladder with scissors in hand.