Life's Promise!



"Don't play with me because I promise I'll ruin your life!"

One thing about life is that it’s consistent! The old timers would say that it’s hard but it’s fair. Some years ago I went to hear the famous motivational speaker Les Brown lecture. During his very inspiring speech he said, “Where ever you end up twenty years from now, you’ve made an appointment to be there twenty years ago.”
That goes for the intellectuals as was as knuckle heads. Former NBA player Jarvaris Crittenton is wanted on a murder charge as police searched on Saturday for him in Atlanta and Los Angeles. He’s been charged in the fatal shooting of 22-year Jullian Jones, a mother of four after she was gunned down Aug. 19 on an Atlanta street.

Many of you remember Crittenton as the other idiot in the Gilbert Arenas locker room gun incident. Where Arenas brought four guns to the locker room and set them in front of Crittenton's locker with a sign telling him to "PICK 1." Jarvaris then took out his own gun. The two were both suspended by the league and he pleaded guilty to a misdemeanor gun charge and received probation.

One of my best friends, Vincent Goods, has been saying, “People don’t change times do” since we were about 14 years old. The older I get that statement makes all of the since in the world. Crittenton’s history of being reckless with guns years ago allowed him to make an appointment to be wanted for murder and to be on the run from the police today.

A few years ago Allen Iverson gave us the infamous rant, “"We're sitting here, and I'm supposed to be the franchise player, and we're talking about practice. I mean listen, we're sitting here talking about practice, not a game, not a game, not a game, but we're talking about practice".

Practice seemingly is the most important thing that any of us can ever do. The question is, what will we practice? If we practice being a knuckle head we’ll definitely become a better knuckle head. In this case, Crittenton has accomplished his goal. It’s a shame that a man that has been blessed with the athletic ability to play the game of basketball at the highest level couldn’t keep it in the road long enough to enjoy the blessing.

He spent the 2006-07 season at Georgia Tech and played in 113 NBA games, only to have allegedly killed a woman with shots fired from a dark-colored SUV, police said. According to Atlanta police spokesman Carlos Campos, investigators don't believe Jullian Jones was the intended target. His motive, Campos said, appeared to be retaliation for an April robbery in which he was a victim.



"What was I thinking?"

What? This kid was a McDonald’s All-American coming out of Southwest Atlanta Christian Academy where he was a teammate of the Orlando Magic’s Dwight Howard. He graduated with a 3.5 GPA and was a member of the Future Business Leaders of America. He was later drafted by the Los Angeles Lakers with the 19^th pick of the 2007 NBA Draft after playing only one year at the prestigious Georgia Tech University.

As you can see, talent means absolutely nothing if you don’t use it. Whatever you spend the most of your time practicing, you’ll become an expert at doing. Crittenton decided to practice being an idiot and here we are! Now he’s going to probably make it big in the world of reality TV on the next episode of Dog The Bounty Hunter.

Holla At Ya Boy!
Jay Graves
Twitter: @jaygravesreport
Information from the Associated Press was used in this article.