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OT - John Wall's Father Story - Did journalist go too far?

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OT - John Wall's Father Story - Did journalist go too far? 

Post#1 » by davhern » Tue Jun 22, 2010 4:36 pm

http://thetimestribune.com/sports/x1703 ... Wall-story

This is the story in question...Hadn't seen it mentioned here and hadn't heard about it until just now, so my bad if it's been posted...

http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/co ... 0062003141

After a sweltering workout in the gymnasium of his former high school last week, Wall sat on the first row of bleachers recounting his childhood. He hardly knew anything about his dad’s time in jail. He learned just this month that his parents got married in prison, after hearing relatives talking about the dress his mom wore. He still had no idea why his father was locked up.

Wall stretched out his legs, revealing his yet-unnamed personal line of Reebok sneakers, and leaned his elbows back on the second row, seemingly at ease.

“I think it was just for an altercation or something that happened,” Wall said, wiping sweat from his face. “I don’t really know. It was something that happened.”

The only record of what happened can be found in microfilm archives deep within a courthouse located just a half mile from where Wall lived on East Davie Street: On Sept. 30, 1991 — less than a month after his son’s first birthday — John Carroll Wall walked into a convenience store in Raleigh, removed one beer and continued to the checkout where clerk Cecil Ibegbu stood. Wall placed a $1 bill on the counter. He then removed a .22-caliber Ruger from the back of his jeans and pointed it at Ibegbu, demanding all the money in the register. He was convicted of robbery with a dangerous weapon.

Sitting in the gym following his workout, Wall was told his father robbed a convenience store. He offered a slight nod and said, “Uh-huh.”

Before meeting his mother, Wall’s father had served three other sentences, one for armed robbery, another for possession of a firearm by a felon and a third for second-degree murder, after shooting a 26-year-old housewife in the head following an argument.

Sitting on the bleachers, Wall learned for the first time that his father had served prison time before he was born and that the crime was murder. He offered no affirmation and looked away for a moment.

“Ohhhh,” he said, dragging the sound for a second. “Oh, I didn’t even know. I didn’t know.”


Pretty sad and a crappy way for him to find out about it, if it was, in fact, the first he had heard about it. Crappy either way for it to be made public, I suppose, if he did know about it and just didn't want to talk about it.
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Re: OT - John Wall's Father Story - Did journalist go too far? 

Post#2 » by JDRochholz » Tue Jun 22, 2010 4:41 pm

wow that's messed. up. It was not that journalists place to tell Wall this information. Or even find out about this. How could you tell someone this???
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Re: OT - John Wall's Father Story - Did journalist go too far? 

Post#3 » by Dekadez » Tue Jun 22, 2010 4:44 pm

I don't really know anything about journalist behaviour and ethical standards in the US, but here the journalist would be way out of line. This is something Wall should, or should not, have found out in his own time, especially seeing Wall had a certain positive image of his father, despite him being in prison. Seems he has fond memories of the time spent with his dad, the journalist has no right to crush that image.
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Re: OT - John Wall's Father Story - Did journalist go too far? 

Post#4 » by DuckIII » Tue Jun 22, 2010 4:49 pm

I suppose it would have been more classy for the journalist to just write the story and publish it behind Wall's back?

I guess he could have pulled Wall to the side secretly and said "I'm running with this story" rather than telling him in front of other people, but I don't see what the big deal is with this.

If it was a shock to Wall, its his parents' and family's fault for never having had told him even though he was on the brink of international fame.
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Re: OT - John Wall's Father Story - Did journalist go too far? 

Post#5 » by Grand Champ » Tue Jun 22, 2010 4:50 pm

I would have punched the Journalist in the face, maybe shot the journalist

ok not really

but wow thats a DICK move, the journalist should have cleared it with his parents first
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Re: OT - John Wall's Father Story - Did journalist go too far? 

Post#6 » by Grand Champ » Tue Jun 22, 2010 4:52 pm

Oh and i'm sure he'll cry himself to sleep at night on his pillow stuffed with hundred dollar bills just fine
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Re: OT - John Wall's Father Story - Did journalist go too far? 

Post#7 » by jamesdiego » Tue Jun 22, 2010 4:55 pm

Just a ****** up way for him to hear that. That's embarrassing as hell to have that conversation between he and the reporter there for the world to read. I just would of hoped the reporter would left that part out. But I guess embarrasing him would get a lot of people to read the story, which is bascially his job.
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Re: OT - John Wall's Father Story - Did journalist go too far? 

Post#8 » by Scott May » Tue Jun 22, 2010 4:57 pm

Grand Champ wrote:I would have punched the Journalist in the face, maybe shot the journalist

ok not really

but wow thats a DICK move, the journalist should have cleared it with his parents first


John Wall is a grown man. He is going to trade on the exposure and publicity he gets as an NBA player to earn endorsement contracts worth tens of millions of dollars. He's going to have to deal with honest-to-goodness journalists, not the quasi-boosters who cover UK basketball (and college ball in general).

Maybe you should punch whoever thought it would be a good idea to withhold this information from John Wall for the past decade or so, because that's who screwed up here.
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Re: OT - John Wall's Father Story - Did journalist go too far? 

Post#9 » by Magilla_Gorilla » Tue Jun 22, 2010 4:58 pm

Grand Champ wrote:I would have punched the Journalist in the face, maybe shot the journalist

ok not really

but wow thats a DICK move, the journalist should have cleared it with his parents first



John Wall is a grown ass man.



I have no problem with what the journalist did.
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Re: OT - John Wall's Father Story - Did journalist go too far? 

Post#10 » by ATRAIN53 » Tue Jun 22, 2010 5:00 pm

DuckIII wrote:If it was a shock to Wall, its his parents' and family's fault for never having had told him even though he was on the brink of international fame.


totally agreed.

they might as well clear some more skeletons out as longs as the closet is open now -
because the more popular he gets the more digging journalists will be doing.

this is where his agent earns his comission - handling the personal details that help this kid cope with becoming a celebrity. get to work Fegan.
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Re: OT - John Wall's Father Story - Did journalist go too far? 

Post#11 » by Jerry Krizause » Tue Jun 22, 2010 5:05 pm

C'mon boys - this is professional sports. I might look at this a little differently if he was still at UK, but once you decide to become a pro, you are fair game for pretty much anything that any journalist wants to say or write. It is not the job of the journalist to be nice to the player or to be classy with what they write or how they write it. A journalist doesn't go too far unless they are just straight up lying about things that they write. If something is true, then it is true. If John Wall doesn't like it, then he can give up the NBA millions and go be a carpenter or something.
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Re: OT - John Wall's Father Story - Did journalist go too far? 

Post#12 » by davhern » Tue Jun 22, 2010 5:06 pm

DuckIII wrote:I suppose it would have been more classy for the journalist to just write the story and publish it behind Wall's back?

I guess he could have pulled Wall to the side secretly and said "I'm running with this story" rather than telling him in front of other people, but I don't see what the big deal is with this.

If it was a shock to Wall, its his parents' and family's fault for never having had told him even though he was on the brink of international fame.



That's pretty much my take on it.

Can't blame the journalist for doing the digging or reporting the story... I do think the way and the setting in which he brought it up was messed up.
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Re: OT - John Wall's Father Story - Did journalist go too far? 

Post#13 » by DuckIII » Tue Jun 22, 2010 5:31 pm

Jerry Krizause wrote:If John Wall doesn't like it, then he can give up the NBA millions and go be a carpenter or something.


Jesus was a carpenter. Quit over-rating John Wall!!!!
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Re: OT - John Wall's Father Story - Did journalist go too far? 

Post#14 » by Art Vandelay » Tue Jun 22, 2010 5:55 pm

It's a bit of a stretch for a story. Sins of the father are not that of the son, as they say. I know the guy was probably trying to find some other connection with Wall's personality--overcoming adversity or whatever, but it rings a bit lame that he went through so much work to get something like this that really has no effect on Wall in 2010.

If we had a story on every absentee or jailhouse parent in pro-sports, we could fill multiple publications for multiple years. Who cares?
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Re: OT - John Wall's Father Story - Did journalist go too far? 

Post#15 » by Scott May » Tue Jun 22, 2010 6:03 pm

Art Vandelay wrote:It's a bit of a stretch for a story. Sins of the father are not that of the son, as they say. I know the guy was probably trying to find some other connection with Wall's personality--overcoming adversity or whatever, but it rings a bit lame that he went through so much work to get something like this that really has no effect on Wall in 2010.

If we had a story on every absentee or jailhouse parent in pro-sports, we could fill multiple publications for multiple years. Who cares?


The reporter went to a courthouse and probably did little more than ask a clerk to look up records pertaining to John Wall's dad's name. He exercised a fundamental right of all citizens and journalists, which is cool.

This knowledge doesn't affect my opinion of Wall one bit -- his dad was obviously a pretty troubled person -- but I would actually be a little disturbed if it didn't have any effect on him, personally.
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Re: OT - John Wall's Father Story - Did journalist go too far? 

Post#16 » by KingoftheCastle » Tue Jun 22, 2010 6:11 pm

A good NBA journalist woud have sat on this story for a while.
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Re: OT - John Wall's Father Story - Did journalist go too far? 

Post#17 » by Legendary 33 » Tue Jun 22, 2010 6:22 pm

Not a big deal but certainly pretty unethical for a journalist to do that. I can imagine the reporter right now in that gymnasium "sooo, John, did you know your father tried to rob a liquor store"

John: ohh, no I didn't.

Reporter: "Yeah, he also killed somebody too"

John. Oh. okay.

Reporter: yeah, you're parents also got married in jail.

john. ohh

reporter: And it all happened just half a mile away from your house in north carolina

John: :(
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Re: OT - John Wall's Father Story - Did journalist go too far? 

Post#18 » by jax98 » Tue Jun 22, 2010 6:28 pm

DuckIII wrote:Jesus was a carpenter.


The hell he was. He sold women's shoes and once scored 4 touchdowns in a single game for Polk High.

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Re: OT - John Wall's Father Story - Did journalist go too far? 

Post#19 » by Vertical Limit » Tue Jun 22, 2010 6:31 pm

Grand Champ wrote:Oh and i'm sure he'll cry himself to sleep at night on his pillow stuffed with hundred dollar bills just fine

Why are you so obsessed with the money these stars make, and think they shouldn't have emotions just like any other normal human just because they have money? Money doesn't buy everything.
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Re: OT - John Wall's Father Story - Did journalist go too far? 

Post#20 » by ChiCitySPORTS#1 » Tue Jun 22, 2010 6:42 pm

was it the journalist the one who was telling him everything or was he just witnessing a conversation?`

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