MsProudSooner
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http://www.tulsaworld.com/sportsextra/ousportsextra/guerin-emig-the-trae-young-experience-has-become-too-much/article_19b40409-236d-53d5-92d5-0a12d8362ba7.html
Here is the text if you can't get to the TW website:
We’re taught what goes up must eventually come down, and so Trae Young was bound to experience reentry after skyrocketing to the top of college basketball. I just didn’t expect him to crash.
This isn’t about his game, the slump that has the freshman point guard and his Oklahoma Sooners headed the wrong direction. This is about the reception to his game. This is about Texas Tech fans chanting “F--- you, Trae Young” during OU’s 88-78 loss Tuesday night.
This is about animosity that had reached a boiling point before the Sooners reached Lubbock.
Asked if Tuesday marked the first time he heard vitriol aimed at Young, OU play-by-play voice Toby Rowland said: “That’s the first time I’ve heard that in unison. That is not at all the first time I’ve heard individuals yell things like that against him.”
Rowland, among the most thoughtful and even-tempered media members I have encountered, tweeted that Young had become “the Darth Vader of college basketball” Wednesday morning.
“It kind of started after the first of the year,” Rowland said during a phone conversation later Wednesday. “I think probably after that Oklahoma State game (Young scored 48 points on 38 shots in OU’s overtime loss Jan. 20) is when you started to see it swing. Walking into an arena and seeing signs... Last night there were several vulgar chants.
“I don’t know how else to say it other than there’s a lot of venom in the crowd toward the young man.”
He isn’t the only one to have noticed.
“Trae Young has become Tom Brady,” said Fran Fraschilla, the preeminent analyst for ESPN’s Big 12 basketball coverage. “No matter what he does, opposing fans or people that just happen to be jealous are going to always find things to criticize about him. Because he’s become a major media star.
“While I think he’s handled it with great grace, the fact is he went from being the good guy to all of a sudden the villain.”
OU’s Blake Griffin physically overpowered opponents en route to winning national player of the year 10 years ago, but he wasn’t some public enemy. Two years ago, OU’s Buddy Hield won many of the awards Griffin did. Opposing fans hated seeing him make 3s, but they also applauded him (see: Kansas) or wanted to take their picture with him (see: Texas or anywhere else he played).
Why is Young different? What is happening here?
Is this resentment caused by media fawning? Or simply fan bases zeroing in on the opponent’s best player?
“A combination of those two things,” Sooners coach Lon Kruger answered. “Anytime a player gets the exposure that Trae has gotten, he’s going to be more of a target for the opposing fans. And obviously when you go into an opposing arena, the crowd is trying to do everything they can to disrupt or get the attention of the visiting team.”
The exposure has been preposterous.
Since Jan. 23, ESPN has billed separate telecasts as “Rock Chalk Jayhawk vs. Trae Young” and “Press Virginia vs. Trae Young.” The network runs Young’s stats above the score of OU games it carries. Studio commentators have dissected the kid’s effort, with NBA highlights intercut, at halftime of games the Sooners aren’t even playing.
“Quite frankly, it’s not unlike what Steph Curry and the Warriors have encountered,” Fraschilla said. “Kevin Durant, for all intents and purposes, has always been a very good human being. Very rarely is he in any kind of controversy away from the court. Steph has been a model citizen. And yet those guys catch flak from people because they get so much attention.
“I think Trae has fallen into that category. Because of ESPN and TV and the print media and the internet, we’ve all made this kid into a megastar. And, by the way, rightfully so based on him having one of the great college seasons in the last 30 to 40 years.”
Guilty as charged. The only time I write about OU basketball is when Young pops onto my radar. The only time national writers come to Norman is to tell Young’s story.
The words and pictures pile up, exacerbated by social media comments and GIFs.
“I think Trae is probably the most covered college basketball player we’ve ever seen,” Rowland said.
It all becomes too much to take, especially in hostile territory.
Peak Trae Young arrived just as the Sooners hit the road to play their Bedlam rival, their Red River rival, an Alabama team with its own freshman sensation in Collin Sexton, and a Texas Tech team not only poised to win the Big 12, but one that Young spurned to play at OU. A Texas Tech program for which Young’s dad once starred.
“Rayford Young is one of the all-time great Texas Tech players. Rayford is my friend. We talk a lot,” Tech coach Chris Beard said Thursday. “Trae took an official visit here. We tried to recruit him, and he gave us a real chance. In the end, I respected him and his decision to stay home where his family could watch him play every game and play for a hall of fame coach.”
Certain Red Raiders fans weren’t so forgiving Tuesday night.
“Trae Young deserved fundamental human respect,” Ryann Real wrote in the Daily Toreador, Tech’s student newspaper, “and we failed to give him that.”
“What happened last night was sickening,” analyst Seth Greenberg said on ESPN Radio on Wednesday.
No doubt. But again, if you’re seeking a flashpoint for the backlash, Greenberg’s own network might be considered as responsible as the lathered-up college students who crossed the line. CBS is responsible. SI and Bleacher Report are responsible. The Tulsa World is responsible.
An uncomfortable question: Is Young also responsible? Inadvertently, perhaps, but at least in part?
He plays joyful basketball with traces of audacity, like Curry. Opposing fans watch him pull up from their midcourt logo and think “How dare he?” When the shot goes in and Young shimmies as he did after one particular 30-footer at OSU, the reaction becomes “How (bleeping) dare he?”
There’s no hiding from that mix of talent and flair. That’s bees-to-honey stuff for announcers, writers, fans and social media lurkers.
“If you are a top flight basketball player, one of the elite players in the country, you just have to understand you kind of make your own bed,” Frashcilla said. “The fact that Trae is on a national stage every night comes with mostly good and some bad. And I think the way he’s handled it has been exemplary.”
Young has handled it phenomenally, considering his 19 years of age and the ridiculous trajectory of his season.
“Anytime you go through something like this for the first time as a freshman at the D-I level or in the Big 12, there’s probably a little bit of an awakening,” Kruger said. “But nothing he’s said has indicated… Obviously it’s an experience. But most of it is probably expected.”
I wish he didn’t have to handle it at all. I wish he could carry on like Griffin and Hield did.
It’s too bad he is playing a different game, having a different impact and being scrutinized on a different level. It’s understandable, when you consider the forces in play, but unfortunate just the same.
Sports Columnist Guerin Emig
Here is the text if you can't get to the TW website:
We’re taught what goes up must eventually come down, and so Trae Young was bound to experience reentry after skyrocketing to the top of college basketball. I just didn’t expect him to crash.
This isn’t about his game, the slump that has the freshman point guard and his Oklahoma Sooners headed the wrong direction. This is about the reception to his game. This is about Texas Tech fans chanting “F--- you, Trae Young” during OU’s 88-78 loss Tuesday night.
This is about animosity that had reached a boiling point before the Sooners reached Lubbock.
Asked if Tuesday marked the first time he heard vitriol aimed at Young, OU play-by-play voice Toby Rowland said: “That’s the first time I’ve heard that in unison. That is not at all the first time I’ve heard individuals yell things like that against him.”
Rowland, among the most thoughtful and even-tempered media members I have encountered, tweeted that Young had become “the Darth Vader of college basketball” Wednesday morning.
“It kind of started after the first of the year,” Rowland said during a phone conversation later Wednesday. “I think probably after that Oklahoma State game (Young scored 48 points on 38 shots in OU’s overtime loss Jan. 20) is when you started to see it swing. Walking into an arena and seeing signs... Last night there were several vulgar chants.
“I don’t know how else to say it other than there’s a lot of venom in the crowd toward the young man.”
He isn’t the only one to have noticed.
“Trae Young has become Tom Brady,” said Fran Fraschilla, the preeminent analyst for ESPN’s Big 12 basketball coverage. “No matter what he does, opposing fans or people that just happen to be jealous are going to always find things to criticize about him. Because he’s become a major media star.
“While I think he’s handled it with great grace, the fact is he went from being the good guy to all of a sudden the villain.”
OU’s Blake Griffin physically overpowered opponents en route to winning national player of the year 10 years ago, but he wasn’t some public enemy. Two years ago, OU’s Buddy Hield won many of the awards Griffin did. Opposing fans hated seeing him make 3s, but they also applauded him (see: Kansas) or wanted to take their picture with him (see: Texas or anywhere else he played).
Why is Young different? What is happening here?
Is this resentment caused by media fawning? Or simply fan bases zeroing in on the opponent’s best player?
“A combination of those two things,” Sooners coach Lon Kruger answered. “Anytime a player gets the exposure that Trae has gotten, he’s going to be more of a target for the opposing fans. And obviously when you go into an opposing arena, the crowd is trying to do everything they can to disrupt or get the attention of the visiting team.”
The exposure has been preposterous.
Since Jan. 23, ESPN has billed separate telecasts as “Rock Chalk Jayhawk vs. Trae Young” and “Press Virginia vs. Trae Young.” The network runs Young’s stats above the score of OU games it carries. Studio commentators have dissected the kid’s effort, with NBA highlights intercut, at halftime of games the Sooners aren’t even playing.
“Quite frankly, it’s not unlike what Steph Curry and the Warriors have encountered,” Fraschilla said. “Kevin Durant, for all intents and purposes, has always been a very good human being. Very rarely is he in any kind of controversy away from the court. Steph has been a model citizen. And yet those guys catch flak from people because they get so much attention.
“I think Trae has fallen into that category. Because of ESPN and TV and the print media and the internet, we’ve all made this kid into a megastar. And, by the way, rightfully so based on him having one of the great college seasons in the last 30 to 40 years.”
Guilty as charged. The only time I write about OU basketball is when Young pops onto my radar. The only time national writers come to Norman is to tell Young’s story.
The words and pictures pile up, exacerbated by social media comments and GIFs.
“I think Trae is probably the most covered college basketball player we’ve ever seen,” Rowland said.
It all becomes too much to take, especially in hostile territory.
Peak Trae Young arrived just as the Sooners hit the road to play their Bedlam rival, their Red River rival, an Alabama team with its own freshman sensation in Collin Sexton, and a Texas Tech team not only poised to win the Big 12, but one that Young spurned to play at OU. A Texas Tech program for which Young’s dad once starred.
“Rayford Young is one of the all-time great Texas Tech players. Rayford is my friend. We talk a lot,” Tech coach Chris Beard said Thursday. “Trae took an official visit here. We tried to recruit him, and he gave us a real chance. In the end, I respected him and his decision to stay home where his family could watch him play every game and play for a hall of fame coach.”
Certain Red Raiders fans weren’t so forgiving Tuesday night.
“Trae Young deserved fundamental human respect,” Ryann Real wrote in the Daily Toreador, Tech’s student newspaper, “and we failed to give him that.”
“What happened last night was sickening,” analyst Seth Greenberg said on ESPN Radio on Wednesday.
No doubt. But again, if you’re seeking a flashpoint for the backlash, Greenberg’s own network might be considered as responsible as the lathered-up college students who crossed the line. CBS is responsible. SI and Bleacher Report are responsible. The Tulsa World is responsible.
An uncomfortable question: Is Young also responsible? Inadvertently, perhaps, but at least in part?
He plays joyful basketball with traces of audacity, like Curry. Opposing fans watch him pull up from their midcourt logo and think “How dare he?” When the shot goes in and Young shimmies as he did after one particular 30-footer at OSU, the reaction becomes “How (bleeping) dare he?”
There’s no hiding from that mix of talent and flair. That’s bees-to-honey stuff for announcers, writers, fans and social media lurkers.
“If you are a top flight basketball player, one of the elite players in the country, you just have to understand you kind of make your own bed,” Frashcilla said. “The fact that Trae is on a national stage every night comes with mostly good and some bad. And I think the way he’s handled it has been exemplary.”
Young has handled it phenomenally, considering his 19 years of age and the ridiculous trajectory of his season.
“Anytime you go through something like this for the first time as a freshman at the D-I level or in the Big 12, there’s probably a little bit of an awakening,” Kruger said. “But nothing he’s said has indicated… Obviously it’s an experience. But most of it is probably expected.”
I wish he didn’t have to handle it at all. I wish he could carry on like Griffin and Hield did.
It’s too bad he is playing a different game, having a different impact and being scrutinized on a different level. It’s understandable, when you consider the forces in play, but unfortunate just the same.
Sports Columnist Guerin Emig
