On & Poppin' (Why Mo'Ne Davis shouldn't have been playin' in the Celebrity All-Star Game)

"Where are your parents girls?"

Joseph Stalin, the former leader of the Soviet Union, once said, “Mankind is divided into rich and poor, into property owners and exploited; and to abstract oneself from this fundamental division; and from the antagonism between poor and rich means abstracting oneself from fundamental facts.” Fidel Castro, the Prime Minister of Cuba, lit up fire cigar, took a few puffs and said, “The revolution is a dictatorship of the exploited against the exploiters.” Then Zadie Smith, the English novelist, broke it down so that it would forever be broken by sayin’, “Desperation, weakness, vulnerability – these things will always be exploited. You need to protect the weak, ring-fence them, with something far stronger than empathy.”

Well playas...here’s the question that nobody with a brain seems to be concerned with these days. Whose job is it to protect Mo’Ne Davis from all of the duns exploitin’ her around this piece? Because obviously her parents have given up the responsibility of lookin’ out for her best interest.

On Friday night as everybody and their momma’s momma, baby’s momma and Uncle Leroy converged onto New York City for the NBA All-Star Weekend and all of its events. The powers that be stuck a square peg into a round whole and nobody said a word. When boyz ran out on the court for the celebrity basketball game in Brooklyn Mo’Ne Davis walked up and jumped the openin’ tip against Kevin Hart and all everybody could say was, “That was cute! I’m glad for her! She gets to hang out with all of the celebrities. What a great experience!”

Well let’s keep it real or all the way 100, whichever comes 1^st! It might be cute and it might be a great experience for this little girl to be able to participate in all of these celebrity events. However, if she gonna play college athletics someday she’s treadin’ dangerous waters with the NCAA by acceptin’ all of these benefits right now. She was even at one of the awards shows just recently on stage presentin’ an award. I can’t remember if it was the BET Hip Hop Awards or the Soul Train Awards but it was one of those award shows. Either way she was there on stage presentin’ an award.

Here’s the problem pimpin’! She’s a 13 year old current student-athlete with aspirations of playin’ college athletics. Therefore, she will soon become a recruitable athlete and as good a pitcher and basketball as she is right now, she’ll be even better in 5 years. She already told boyz last summer durin’ the Little League World Series that her dream was to play basketball at the University of Connecticut. When Geno Auriemma simply called to congratulate her. The NCAA went into overdrive to see if ole boy had violated any rules by just tellin’ her congratulations.

Now she’s flyin’ to major events, postin’ up in major hotels, gettin’ celebrity gift bags that are worth thousands of dollars. OK, maybe she didn’t fly to New York on Friday because Philly is only an hour away but she didn’t pay for gas playa, I’ll tell you that. The fact that she’s in the celebrity game that was on television that the network is sellin’ ads space for is a problem. The fact that she’s even there means that she’s bein’ taken care of. For arguments sake, let’s say that they didn’t even pay her to play in the freakin’ game. You already know that they paid for accommodations, food and gear etc. They gave away gift bags because that’s standard operatin’ procedure in the world of sports and entertainment.

So now let’s fast forward 5 years playa and UConn ends up signin’ her but some cat for example like Tennessee or Duke doesn’t land the big fish. They start playa hatin’ and start diggin’ up all of the foolishness that went on durin’ the recruitment process datin’ back to 2015 and it’s revealed that some cat that simply works for ESPN went to UConn. Now the NCAA launches an internal investigation datin’ back to the freakin’ 2015 NBA All-Star game where Mo’Ne was kickin’ it like all of the other celebs and received gifts that were worth more than the permissible $100 amount.

Oh I’m talkin’ crazy? We’ve seen how boyz that lose will throw shade in a minute. We just saw the dun from Evergreen Park expose Jackie Robinson West! Oh that’s not good enough for you playa? What about the haters down in Starkville, Ms. that tried to ruin Cam Newton and the Auburn Tigers National Championship run in 2010. They lost the recruitin’ battle for Cam and tried to throw them under the bus by tellin’ boyz that Cam’s old man took $180K to come to Miss. State. But now all of a sudden they wanna call themselves Stark Vegas this year. 

Oh that ain't good enough for you playa? You don't remember Dez Bryant havin' to sit out his last season at Oklahoma State for havin' dinner at Deion Sanders crib and that wasn't even on television? But I'm talkin' crazy!

So you already know boyz are countin’ every dime that it costs to take care of Mo’Ne at these types of events. And they’ve made it easy because it’s all on TV bruh! You can’t say that she wasn’t there because millions of people saw her gettin’ it in. Just pull a Huggy Lowdown playboy and “Waaaait for it!” Because the first school that she turns down and signs with a dun in their conference it’s gonna be on and poppin’ like Chris Brown.

If her goal is to play college basketball then allow her to put in the work and get there. It would be a shame if she were to put in all of the necessary work to become one of the best in the country and end up bein’ ineligible to play college ball because some adult wanted to give her some unneeded gifts, gear, plane tickets, hotel accommodations and exposure at 13. Now I realize that the NCAA has made some consessions because she is a rare case like allowin' her to do a Chevy commercial etc. But side gifts are still illegal playboy.

Now who do I blame for all of this foolishness? Her darn parents! And that’s the edited version! Stop me when I start lyin’!

Playas Thesaurus:

1) Fire: adjective: Good or excellent
2) Pimpin’: noun – the person that I’m passionately tryin’ to get my point across to.
3) Throwin’ Shade: verb – to playa hate a boy, to try to dampen another person’s good fortune.
4) Huggy Lowdown: noun – Famous Comedian that always says, “Waaaait for it!”
  Holla At Ya Boy!
JayGravesReport
#thebestdressedmaninmedia
Get @ me on Twitter: @jaygravesreport
Facebook: www.facebook.com/TheJayGravesReport
Instagram: JayGravesReport
The caption under the photo isn't real but its REAL talk!