No more punishment needed for the ‘UCLA Three’

Steve Alford needs to let UCLA freshmen LiAngelo Ball, Cody Riley and Jalen Hill, who were detained in China last week, go without extra punishment.

Without empathy, having not walked an inch in their shoes, some people would like the three UCLA players arrested in China for shoplifting to pay a larger price than the one each has already paid.

For a drop of blood, people on the mean streets of Twitter are screaming for amputation. In what was teenagers doing really dumb teenage things, some would like it for Steve Alford to wield his hammer of justice with the vengeance best served smashing adults in the head with — so on and so forth. In what is not shocking during the social media era, people have opinions, and many of them have to do with their idea of justice, and it is almost always heavy-handed in its use.

With people, including some reporters, inferring that Alford has a big decision on his hands when “The UCLA Three” return from China on Wednesday, the UCLA head coach needs to not allow outside perspective be what dictates his next move. Instead, all he needs to do is conjure an image of yesteryear, to when he himself was young and dumb and all those other negative adjectives.

The punishment should fit the crime. There’s no arguing what those three freshmen did was anything other than irresponsible and idiotic. No one will say differently. At the same time, it should be noted that Ball, Riley and Hill have all likely paid enough for their crimes — if not in the legal system, or on the court, with how each is now perceived in the judgmental public eye.

In a foreign, communist country, used as a talking-point by national talking-heads, The UCLA Three have suffered a lifetime’s worth of embarrassment in less than a week’s time. From here on out, almost no matter what each player does as a talent or person for the rest of their lives, getting popped in China for stealing clothes will hang over them forever.

None of us would like to be judged for all of eternity for our actions as incredibly young people.  This — not what the Chinese government did — will be the most costly of prices they will have to pay moving forward.

That, itself, should be enough.

There’s no need to insert further punishment into the mix. Sure, Alford could hand down a few game suspension, but for who? For what? Are any of those players going to learn #MOAR lessons by extra judgment?

People will remain on social media, belittling each of the three until the next big viral happening, to the point of those players being stuck within the confines of their own doing. Fair or not — and it is most certainly not — the decision the three of them made to steal clothing in a foreign country will define them forever.

Define. Them. Forever.

It shouldn’t. And yet, it will.

The only reason to give LiAngelo Ball, Cody Riley and Jalen Hill some more comeuppances would be to satisfy the misguided thirst for justice the public has. A public, mind you, that doesn’t actually have UCLA or the players’ best interests in its heart. Hell, it doesn’t even have the ideal of justice within its intentions. The public often just wants blood for the sake of it being spilled.

Steve Alford needs to avoid giving in to a pressure he might be feeling from the outside world. His job is to win games for the Bruins, but it is also to protect his young, unpaid labor. While disciplining a player for a mistake can be considered a form of that, refraining from an overreaction, in an effort to let things blow over, given the aforementioned context, would be far more fitting.

There’s a lot to be said about this entire debacle. Almost none of it is fit for a discussion rooted in factual data. Some can opine about the idiocy of the three players, as some of us defend them as just dumb youths, but it is all conjecture. Not a single one of us, save for Alford and those kids’ families, actually know them.

It is largely why Alford need not heed advice from anyone other than his gut-instincts and those players’ families.

From a distance, we judge. We want blood for things very few actually care about. For the same reason networks used to put a player’s college major and GPA in a graphic during a game broadcast, people want college basketball to feel like it is founded in some fictional realm where the mythology of amateurism is real and of the utmost importance.

It is not. Just because people want a money-sport to feel pure, with it being as consumable as a can of Coca-Cola, doesn’t mean the UCLA Bruins need to operate within such a fictitious world.

If nothing else, being detained in a communist country, with other legal sanctions looming over the three players, could and should be cited as enough. There’s no need to do more here. In fact, there’s nothing else to see.

Be upset, if you want, if Alford decides to not levy more sanctions against these teenagers. Continue to judge them from afar, if that is your slot in life. But make no bones about this entire event. It should be used as a teaching moment for the three players, which can be done without further penance handed down.

The mortification, I assure you, is enough.