Alabama Keeps Showing It Doesn’t Mind Trading PR Hits for Victories

The Tide keep winning, and they’ll keep facing the heat for the lack of action and forthcomingness with the murder case that hovers over their season.

NASHVILLE—This figures to be the pattern for Alabama, Brandon Miller and Nate Oats for as long as this Crimson Tide basketball season continues—which could be eight more games, right through the national championship. There will be a warm embrace from the Bama fans who only care about winning, a cold line of questioning in the postgame press conference and a few carefully chosen words in response.

This is the path the Tide have chosen to take, and they’ll clearly continue to trade PR hits for victories in what could end up the best season in school history. Thumping Mississippi State 72–49 in the Southeastern Conference tournament quarterfinals was the start—of something big, something awkward, something that will rub a lot of people the wrong way.

Playing ball and being dogged by an alleged murder, this is unprecedented multitasking.

SEC commissioner Greg Sankey presented Alabama with its regular-season championship trophy before the game Friday, to the delight of a larger-than-usual contingent of Crimson Tide fans at this event. During pregame introductions—no patdowns included—Miller was welcomed with the loudest cheers, which largely drowned out the boos that came from some sections. After Miller hung 19 points, eight rebounds and five assists on the Bulldogs, he got the hero treatment: a brief sideline ESPN interview; slapping hands with maybe a dozen adoring Alabama fans; and a high five from assistant athletic director Shane Lyons on the way to the locker room.

The press conference was, predictably and justifiably, weighted away from basketball and toward Alabama’s actions (or lack thereof) after Crimson Tide player Darius Miles was charged with murder and expelled from school on Jan. 15. It’s worth noting that AL.com published a story during the game saying that Miles and his friend, Michael Davis, had been indicted by a grand jury on a capital murder charge—an indication of how intertwined a criminal investigation and a basketball season have become.

Since Feb. 21, when a detective testified in a pre-trial hearing that Miller transported Miles’s gun to the scene of a deadly shootout in downtown Tuscaloosa that claimed the life of 23-year-old mother Jamea Jonae Harris, his only public comments came in a five-minute appearance at an on-campus press conference Wednesday. That tame event was a dry run for Alabama to get its non-answers straight before Nashville, where there is far more media access.

Miller has not been charged with a crime and is not a suspect. But he did have the alleged murder weapon in his car when he drove to meet Miles and Davis sometime around 1:45 a.m. off The Strip in Tuscaloosa. Miles texted Miller that he wanted his gun, though it’s not clear if or when Miller saw the text. Miller’s car was struck by gunfire, according to police. Teammate and fellow freshman Jaden Bradley was also present during the shootout.

Those facts were not disclosed by Alabama, and neither player has missed a minute of playing time since then. Which prompted my question to Miller: “Given your involvement, on some level, in a fatal shooting, how do you reconcile not missing any playing time after that occurred?”

The answer: “Respectfully, I’m not going to be able to say on that.”

I clarified that I wasn’t asking about the incident itself, but the aftermath. Miller’s answer: “I just really lean on my teammates, really.”

Those answers didn’t really fit the questions, but they were similar to the stock responses Miller offered on Wednesday. The rest of this press conference with Miller and teammate Jahvon Quinerly provided little more on the tragic subject that looms over the Tide.

Per SEC policy, the Alabama locker room was open postgame. I asked Bradley—who has not been heard from at all since his name was linked to the shooting—about his role. He declined comment to three questions.

For Oats, my question was about the deliberations that went into continuing to play Miller and Bradley, and not disclosing their presence at the shooting. His answer: “It’s been a difficult situation. We understand that we’re dealing with a criminal matter, so taking the facts from law enforcement as they do their investigation—as we got the facts from them, this was a decision made with the facts we had. With, obviously, my boss, Greg Byrne, and his boss, Dr. [Stuart] Bell, and the board of trustees, everyone was comfortable with the information we had that Brandon didn’t break any school policy or team policy. So we were comfortable with the decision that was made.”

Not violating a written policy and making a serious error in judgement are two different things, of course. But Alabama decided in January that it was all-in on playing the SEC Player of the Year, and doubled down on that after Feb. 21. So here we are.

To the credit of the school and the SEC, neither entity manipulated the media access protocol in order to avoid questions of hide players. Miller and Oats were available on the podium. Bradley was available in the locker room. They didn’t say a lot, but if they had it would have been shocking and potentially risky from a legal perspective.

Oats, who has not risen to this serious occasion rhetorically, almost managed to get through his remarks without saying something that set eyes rolling. But there was one sentence, uttered while extolling a player for putting in extra work to improve his game, that indicated the lack of perspective on what transpired is still there.

“All our kids are pretty high-character kids,” Oats said.

Except, perhaps, for the guy sitting in jail and facing a capital murder charge.