Roger Grossman
News Now Warsaw

Last week, Jaden Ivey was released by the Bulls for what the team described as conduct “detrimental to the team.”

It was the result of Ivey posting a video on social media criticizing the NBA and his own team for their “Pride Night” and “Pride Month” promotions.

Here’s what he said: "The world proclaims LGBTQ, right? They proclaim Pride Month and the NBA does, too. They show it to the world. They say, 'Come join us for Pride Month to celebrate unrighteousness.' They proclaim it on the billboards. They proclaim it on the streets. Unrighteousness."

For that, the Bulls deemed that he could no longer be on their team.

There are several different angles that I want to take in discussing this issue.

First, a series of questions.

Did he threaten a teammate who is known as gay? No.

Did he “out” a teammate who was not publicly known as gay? No.

Did he physically assault anyone because they are known as gay? No.

What did he do wrong then? He spoke his mind. He has an opinion on a subject that most people have an opinion on, and he shared it.

In a world where everyone seems to have an opinion on everything, and they have plenty of places to share it, Jaden Ivey did that and it cost him his job with the Bulls.

This is the NBA — the same league that had an accusation of domestic violence against a player on the LA Lakers in 2021 and that player missed no games for it.

As a matter of fact, an ESPN article on the matter claims no one from the NBA Legal Department even talked to the victim before clearing the player to continue playing.

The player’s name is Jaxson Hayes, and he pleaded “no contest” to misdemeanor charges of false imprisonment and resisting law enforcement.

He was not fined or suspended by either the league or his team at the time, the New Orleans Pelicans.

So, it’s ok to beat your wife or girlfriend, but it’s unthinkable to share your opinion?

Noooo … it’s ok to beat your wife or girlfriend, but it’s unthinkable to share your opinion if it doesn’t agree with the corporation’s social agenda.

See the difference?

Another angle to this story is that Jaden Ivey was just traded to the Bulls from Detroit, and he really was not doing very well in Chicago.

Overall, he’s been a pretty big disappointment since joining the NBA after a terrific run at Purdue.

Which, with a record of 29-47 and roughly half a dozen games to go, meant Ivey was expendable. He wasn’t coming back to the Bulls next season anyway, and so the front office just looked at the video as an easy way to jettison him from their roster now.

In other words, Ivey opened the door of the airplane for the Bulls and they pushed him out.

All of those people in the front office who spoke after his banishment said they hoped that Ivey “would get the help he needs” and they were “worried about him.”

Obviously, they weren’t worried about him enough to actually help him while he was part of them. They kicked him out and told him to go get help from someone else.

Of course, another angle here is that the current climate of freedom of speech in America is this: “You have freedom to say whatever you want, as long as I/we agree with it.”

For those of you scoring at home, that’s not really freedom of speech, but those are the ground rules we are playing by in 2026.

The better rule of thumb for free speech today is “know your audience.”

And the final angle to consider here is that the NBA is a private organization and the Bulls are a privately owned franchise, and they can pretty much do whatever they want in this situation. Remembering that I am not a lawyer (but have watched enough Law & Order episodes to pass the New York State Bar Association exam), I think that if the Bulls really believe he was harming them and their employees, it would be hard to make a lawsuit stick that says otherwise.

Did he, in fact, get ‘fired’ by the Bulls for his religious beliefs? Yes…yes he did. Which would be illegal. But the Bulls' legal team would counter that claim with the previously mentioned angles and say they were going to let him go in a few weeks anyway.

Jaden Ivey lost his job for speaking truth.

Those of us with similar convictions will be forced to choose one of two paths: to keep quiet and keep working or speak up and take on the risk.

Time to ask yourself, “What would my boss do if I said something like that?”

Then ask yourself, “Should I do it anyway because it’s the right thing to do?”'

Purdue’s basketball season ended with a West Regional Final loss to top-seeded Arizona Saturday night.

As I watched the final seconds fade from the clock, I fully understood the ramifications of what was happening.

I was watching the end of an era, not just in Purdue Basketball, but in college basketball in general.

Here were college seniors — players who had been at the same school for four years—trudging off the court for the final time as representatives of their school and their program.

Bradon Smith, Fletcher Loyer, and Trey Kaufman-Renn had just accomplished something that we aren’t likely to see much of ever again. They had completed four years of college basketball at the same school.

And they were not just the guys who sit at the end of the bench, either. These guys were integral parts of Purdue teams that had experienced both playing in the National Championship game and losing in the first round as a number-1 seed.

We can learn a lot from these three guys.

Today I would like to examine some of those things.

1. Experience matters.

Playing under the same coach in the same system for four years means they knew what was coming more times than not. They knew what Coach Matt Painter was thinking as he was thinking it. They knew what the other was thinking. They knew what their other teammates were thinking.

How? Because they had been through it before, and they had been through it together.

And they clearly pay attention. Not everyone does that.

There certainly are more talented teams than the Boilermakers in the field of 68 teams, but there are none that have the depth of knowledge that they have.

They knew how to use that knowledge to their benefit, and they did it well.

2. Coaching matters.

Matt Painter has become one of the most respected coaches in America because each and every season, he puts a team on the floor that competes with anyone they run into.

And let’s be 100-percent ‘real’ about it—he’s recruiting kids to come to West Lafayette, Indiana. Not the beaches of Florida, not the southern Atlantic coastline…Northern Indiana. There is nothing sexy or cool to a 17-or 18-year-old kid about West Lafayette. It’s cold there in the winter, in case you didn’t know. It’s also not a hub of high society.

Painter knows that. Remember, he was once recruited to Purdue, and he accepted that invitation.

So, he’s not wasting his time standing in long lines for five-star recruits who will play there a year and move on.

No, he’s looking for the best of the rest. He’s willing to take guys who are less talented but willing to do what it takes to get better and to do whatever the team needs to do to win.

He’s also getting the best of Indiana, too.

One Indiana Mr. Basketball will graduate in Smith, and he’s getting the presumptive 2026 Mr. Basketball in Mt. Vernon’s Luke Ertel. Ertel scored 26 in leading Mt. Vernon to the 4A state championship on Saturday night.

3. Good stories don’t have to have happy endings.

Everyone associated with Purdue basketball, including their fans, is disappointed that they aren’t still playing this weekend. Of course they are!

But no one should think that this season was a failure because they didn’t win Saturday night.

They started the year as number-1 in the polls, tripped and fell down a few times in February, and was staring at being a 5 or 6 seed in the NCAA Tournament heading to Chicago for the Big 10 Tournament.

They won three straight games and that tournament title and looked like they had locked back into being who we all thought they were.

They ended up a 2-seed, and the team that knocked them out was the top seed in the West Region.

And they led Arizona for about 30 minutes of the game before the inside presence of the Wildcats was joined by a series of 3-pointers in key moments.

Arizona is a better team, and they deserved to win. Purdue played well, they fought valiantly, and they proved to be worthy of being in the Elite 8.

In the end, that’s all anyone can ask for.

It was a noble ending for a group of guys who have given the university and the program a lot.

4. It’s never wrong to do the right thing.

These guys we’re talking about are not likely to be NBA stars. It’s much more likely that they will spend a lot more time and make a lot more money in their adult lives doing something other than playing basketball. And there is absolutely nothing wrong with that!

By staying in school for four years, these guys don’t have to worry about playing catch up or having to circle back to finish their class work and get their degrees. That allows them to go to Las Vegas for the NBA Summer Camp or to sign in Europe without worrying about what happens if that plan doesn’t work out.

In other words, they have options. And when you have options, your life has a better chance of turning out well.

There are things in life that we know are coming, and we still are not and cannot be prepared enough to experience them anyway.

The most extreme of those things is death.

We knew that former Notre Dame football coach Lou Holtz was dying. His family let us know that by telling us that hospice had been called in to tend to him.

That usually means the patient has a few months or less to live.

Because of his family’s gracious act of warning us that his time was running out, we were allowed a moment to take a big, deep breath and say “goodbye” — if not directly to him, then through social media or in our own souls.

The news came out last Wednesday that the beloved coach-turned-football analyst had breathed his last, and what happened next was the collective gasp from the sporting world that said, “NO! We are not ready!”

Death comes, ready or not, and marches into your life and it never looks the same again.

Lou Holtz won 239 football games in his college football coaching career. He’s still the only coach who has taken six different schools to bowl games. He led Notre Dame to the National Championship in 1988.

With the Irish, he went 100-32-2 from 1986-1996. The championship season of ’88 started a stretch of seasons where Notre Dame won 64 of 74 games and cemented coach’s legacy in Irish lore.

But if you only talked about the wins and losses … if you only mention the “Catholics vs Convicts” game or you only recall the touchdown pass from Rick Meier to Jerome Bettis or his pass to Reggie Brooks for the two-point conversion that beat Penn State in the snow at Notre Dame Stadium, you’ve tragically missed the whole point of Lou Holtz.

Lou Holtz was a man of conviction. He believed in Notre Dame, not because of the tradition or the winning history that came from it, but because of what it stood for and what it represented — and who.

He loved the university’s high academic standards because he knew that the young people who wore those golden helmets on Saturday afternoons would be football players for just a little while.

He wanted them to understand that he was trying to prepare them for life as husbands and fathers, leaders and followers and not just middle linebackers and offensive tackles.

Despite his speech impediment, he was a master communicator.

The way he dealt with people, those in his program and those who were not, was a master class in how to get the most out of humanity.

He was certainly not someone whose physical presence commanded attention. It wasn’t his appearance that filled the room. It was his persona. When he was in a room, he dominated it by not trying to. He was as humble as they came and he spoke to you on your level even though you knew you were not on his level at all.

His storytelling ability was second to none.

No one could spin a yard quite like Lou Holtz could. Even as attention spans have been shrinking in recent years, he could tell a story that would take 10 minutes to lay out, and no one cared a bit.

There was, of course, that side of coach that made us roll our eyes. That was the side that would try to convince us that the 0-8 team the Irish were about to face was the best 0-8 team he’s ever seen. It made us giggle … because it was Lou’s way.

But there is one piece of his life’s philosophy that I will carry with me until I take my own final breath, whenever that might be.

While addressing his team in the home locker room one sun-drenched Saturday afternoon, Coach stood in the middle of his boys, and he explained to them that the game they were about to play would be a hard one to win. It was there, with both hands way down deep in his front pockets and his hat pulled down to just above his eyebrows, he said something that changed my life and that I carry with me to this day and every day for as long as I live.

“Show me someone who has done something worthwhile, and I'll show you someone who has overcome adversity,” he said. “I've never known anybody to achieve anything without overcoming adversity. Adversity is another way to measure the greatness of individuals. I never had a crisis that didn't make me stronger. Do you understand that what we look for is adversity … because in adversity there is opportunity.”

I tear up just typing that.

He demanded that we strive to do better and be better, to work harder and reach higher, to never stop.

And what he was not driving us all towards was a better self. He was pushing us to go beyond our own boundaries. He wanted us to see what was possible when we chose to use our energy to serve others. He knew that when we loved each other enough, on a football field or off it, we could be more and do more and make the world we lived in a better place.

And he showed us that by living it out every day.

He talked often about the Spirit of Notre Dame. He credited it for many home wins during his time as coach.

Well, the Spirit of Lou Holtz is now free to roam about the locker rooms, the playing surface and the famous tunnel at Notre Dame Stadium.

And maybe, just maybe, one day, when the breaks are beating the boys, the coach of that Irish team will say, “He’s with us today in spirit. I can feel it. Now, let’s go win this one for Lou.”

Even though it’s rainy this week, the warmer temps and the end of basketball season for most schools have us all thinking about spring and the spring sports season.

We soon will have the unique “thud” of baseballs and softballs into gloves, the sound of the starter’s pistol splitting the crisp air and the “wack” of the golf ball being smacked down the fairway off the first tee fill our ears.

Spring is the season of optimism. But it’s not all good.

I have no stats to back it up, but I think more kids commit acts that violate their school’s athletic code in the spring and summer than at any other time of the year. That makes them miss parts of or all of the spring season and beyond.

Consider this an open letter to parents, grandparents, guardians and anyone else who is responsible for kids from fifth grade through high school at 6A schools and 1A schools alike.

I am asking you for a favor. No, I am actually begging you to do something for me, and for you, and for those kids.

I want you to pull them aside — somewhere quiet, without anyone else around—and ask them these questions: “Do you vape?” …  “Do you drink?” …  “Are you doing anything that could get you in trouble?”

Here’s a hint: if they drop their eyes to the floor, take that as a “yes.” Another hint: if they say “no” but their eyes look down and to the left, take that as a “yes” also.

Either way, follow up with “If you took a drug test or a Blood Alcohol Content test right now, would you pass it?”

You’re looking for the same responses.

When I was in school in the 1980’s, I knew that there were kids who smoked occasionally, drank alcoholic beverages behind the barn, and/or did drugs — mostly during the spring and summer. I remember having to stop the team bus on the way home from a soccer game because one of my older teammates was having trouble breathing. I thought it was caused by the physical strain of a hard match. I was naïve and didn’t understand what was really happening until much later.

Once I knew, I didn’t have the confidence and courage to speak up. I was 15 years old.

I am not 15 anymore.

According to the most recent stats from the Indiana Youth Tobacco Survey done by the Indiana Department of Health, 9-percent of Indiana high school students use e-cigarettes regularly. And those who admitted using preferred the flavored kinds.

Please, don’t be blind to the truth. Athletes are doing it too! Not just trying it, doing it…regularly.

Maybe they are using the flavored kind. Maybe they are mixing in a little “pot” with it.

You may say “none of your business” or “worry about your own kids.” You don’t understand—your kids are my kids. They are my business. And we’re not just talking about Warsaw athletes here. I care about Wawasee kids, Triton kids, Tippecanoe Valley kids, Manchester and NorthWood and Whitko and Lakeland Christian kids too. Non-athletes and athletes alike. However, in my job as a radio announcer and sportscaster, I focus more on athletes. So does this column, generally.

My grief comes from the fact that I am watching kids work all year long, put in hundreds of hours in the weight room and conditioning, going to camps and traveling all over the Midwest and then needlessly put all of that at risk because they are violating their school’s athletic code. Why? How did they start? Who helped them start? I can’t answer any of those questions.

What I can do is beg you, again, to pull the teen in your life—girls as well as boys—into a room and have one of the most important conversations you’ll ever have with them.

And it starts with those simple, powerful questions: “Do you vape?”… “Do you drink?”…and “Are you doing anything to get into trouble?”

The biggest problem on the team your kid plays on may not be playing time, or whether they pass the ball enough or if the person playing shortstop should be playing short or second base. Simply by the numbers, one starter on every basketball team, 2 starters on every baseball and softball team, one golfer, one tennis player and multiple football players — are violating their school’s rules on substance abuse.

Ask the question.

No matter if they see their classmates doing it, they are still doing it. Teammates get caught and suspended for it, but they’ll still do it.

Ask the question.

“Can’t happen here”. “Not in my family. We’re tight.” “We live in a certain neighborhood.” “I know my kids.”

Do you? Do you really?

Ask the question … and brace yourself for the answer.