This is something I never thought I’d say, but I have an excessive amount of school pride. It’s always my policy to walk out of my dorm room with at least three UCLA-branded items on my person, and the more the better. I used to think it was rather silly when people would wear UCLA merchandise around campus; obviously, we all got into the same school, so advertising that fact didn’t make much sense to me. However, now I understand that it’s not like that at all. When I wear something that says UCLA, I’m saying, “I’m proud of this school, and the fact that I belong here.” UCLA owns me in a way nothing else ever will, and I’m more than willing to show my subservience. There’s just something about being here that makes me want to contribute to its legacy. I want to become part of something great so that I can increase UCLA’s fame, not just so that I can make a name for myself.
I suppose that’s why I’m so jealous of our athletes. Our school has a rich athletic background, and these players get to become the face of UCLA, proving the superiority of our university to the world as we take down the top players from other schools. Athletes like Kareem Abdul-Jabbar, Troy Aikman, and Jackie Robinson give part of their legacy to UCLA, and it’s their passion for the program that makes them memorable, not just their mastery of a sport. Passion is something we expect from all artists today, and when I have so much of it, I expect the public faces of UCLA to take as much pride as I would in wearing a UCLA jersey, to want to win the game not just for themselves, but for our school.
So, I have trouble swallowing the lies down when some player says he wants to leave a legacy at UCLA, but then leaves less than a year after coming here. I have a problem when a player says he just wants to enjoy the college atmosphere but then drops it at the first opportunity. I have trouble believing that they ever felt inside the true blue of their uniforms, that they were part of UCLA instead of just wearing a different shirt for one year than they had before. When I have so much passion for what they can do, I expect them to have the same.
I cried every time our basketball team lost a game, sometimes spending days doing nothing but lying in bed. It wasn’t just about our statistics; I was feeling what I presumed to be the pain of every player on that team at having given their best and coming up short. So what am I supposed to do when it turns out one of those players really didn’t care in the end, as regardless of whether we won or lost he would leave?
Did it matter to you that your teammates were playing for our school and you were playing for your own numbers? Did it matter that someone who had given it his all the last three years was benched his last year just so you could breeze through our program for six months? Did it matter that I cared about you more than you ever cared about this school?
I guess I’m too naïve. For some reason you not hiring an agent gave me some hope; not that you would return, but that you truly didn’t want to leave. But then you decide to sign two weeks before school ends. What a surprise. It doesn’t seem to me like you can withdraw from classes when you haven’t been on campus at all this quarter, and even when you did have to maintain academic eligibility you found that class was optional. Of course, when you did come, it was just a socializing event for you. And here I was worried that you were missing your coursework.
Of course, postponing what obviously was inevitable for so long now affects the amount of scholarships UCLA will be able to give out to future Bruins. I know you're used to thinking about yourself, but something this simple would have been plain courtesy.
You want to leave UCLA so you can make obscene amounts of money? And the fact that you have several endorsements on the table doesn’t make it too hard, either. Do you feel like you’re a prostitute, selling yourself to the highest bidder? Because that’s how I see you.
You’re treating basketball like a job now? So what was it before? A hobby? When the championship hopes of your teammates depended on your performance, it didn’t matter, but when millions of dollars are at stake, then you’ll take it “to the next level”? For what? What does the NBA give you besides money? You’ll never have that pride of representing something greater than yourself when you can be traded in the next season.
When you put your face in your hands at the end of the Memphis game, were you upset in the same way that I and the rest of your teammates were, because the championship that should have been wasn’t? Or were you seeing your draft stock plummet?
Despite your publicity, your name will not be heard in Pauley Pavilion with reverence. While you may go on to make more money than anyone ever needs, it is your teammates, those who stayed in college because they loved the atmosphere and what UCLA has given them, who will be remembered.
I used to think you never wore anything that said UCLA on it, despite the ridiculous amounts of free clothing and accessories Adidas would give you, just so you could try and blend in on campus, to really be a college student. Now I just see you didn’t have the pride required to don the blue, as I and countless others have done. So, maybe UCLA hasn’t lost an athlete, because you never belonged to this university in the first place.