The 1st Rule Of Engagement

"I'm going to always think 1st and listen from now on!" 

One of my best friends in the world, Royce Bradley, always says, "Life is a thinking man's game." The person with the ability or willingness to think things through will 9 out of 10 times finish on top, regardless of who they are and what they're profession is. Thinking is the first rule of engagement.

When I was fifteen years old my father gave me some condoms along with this message, “Don’t ever put your future in someone else’s hand. Now he was speaking in terms of being careless and getting some girl pregnant however, I adopted it for every aspect of my life.

Plaxico Burress and so many others didn't learn that rule as a kid. Having a clear understanding of how important it is to think could be the difference between life and death on so many occasions but especially in regards to your freedom it is essential. In an interview with HBO's "Real Sports" that air will Tuesday, he made these revelations and retraced some of the key events that landed him in prison for 20 months.

"I had a drink in my left hand," Burress said. "I'm just walking up the stairs. And, you know, it was dark. And I kind of, you know, missed a step. That's when I felt my gun ... started to slide. I went to grab it ... to stop it from falling. POW!"

He assumed that he had escaped injury at first. "I knew it had went off. I saw the fire, like, come through my jeans," he said, adding, "I took a couple more steps and my jeans were like -- my jeans are wet. And I looked down. I had some Chuck Taylor’s on and they were -- the white was all red. I'm in trouble."

Burress' wife Tiffany, an attorney, explained to him that New York had stiff gun laws and that he would probably have to do some jail time when he responded, "I'm not going to jail." However, Mayor Bloomberg was going to make sure he did though.

Burress' attorney, Benjamin Brafman, tells "Real Sports" that a bail agreement for $10,000, which would've allowed Burress to be released on his own recognizance, was undermined by Bloomberg. On the day of the agreement, the mayor delivered a harsh public rebuke of Burress, saying he deserved to be prosecuted to the full extent of the law.

"About 20 minutes after the mayor held his press conference, the prosecutor called me and said they're going to be asking for $250,000 bail," Brafman said. "I said, 'This is outrageous, we had an agreement.'" Agreements mean absolutely nothing bruh!

Now if he were a young rich white athlete would he had been convicted and served 20 months in prison? Probably not! However, that isn’t the point here. The point is, life is a thinking man’s game! A thinking man would have understood that he's more likely to go to jail when he picked up the gun and put it in his waist at home in the first place.

My parents would always say, “Boy you can’t get away with doing what they do because they’ll put you in jail.” That was the unwritten law. Now it’s been well documented. According to the Bureau of Statistics, blacks are six time more likely to be convicted and sentenced to longer prison terms than whites for the same crimes. By simply thinking and recalling what my parents told me as a child kept me out of trouble as I got older.

It’s imperative to know that the rules aren’t always the same for all people in this country. So therefore, I’m not complaining about the system. I’m just disappointed that so many young people haven’t been fore warned on how the system works. If you know that it isn’t fair then do everything you can to stay out of the system. We've got to spend time with these youngsters to make sure they at least learn the 1st rule, "thinking",  because it can save their lives. It really is just that simple!

I hope that Plaxico’s situation can open the eyes of other athletes and kids across this country to help them make better decisions. If you don’t understand the rules of the game how can you be successful and win?

Holla At Ya Boy!
Jay Graves
Twitter: @jaygravesreport