College Basketball Player Kicked Off Team After Violent Fight with Coach
College basketball prospects are frequently assigned NBA comparables when it comes time to write about them in advance of the NBA draft.
DeAndre Ayton got compared to Shaquille O’Neal, Trae Young drew comps to Stephen Curry, and Luka Doncic was seen as an upgrade-button version of his fellow Slovenian Goran Dragic.
For Iona’s Roland Griffin, it looks like he may be drawing comparisons to Latrell Sprewell.
Sprewell, of course, is infamous for choking coach P.J. Carlesimo during an argument on the Golden State Warriors’ sideline back in 1997.
And while Griffin didn’t choke his coach, he did punch Gaels assistant coach Garfield “Ricky” Johns repeatedly in the locker room Monday morning, according to a report Friday from Stadium.
EXCLUSIVE: A fight between an Iona basketball player and coach landed the coach in the hospital and left the player kicked off the team.@GoodmanHoops with the story.https://t.co/W0h1sxhp4U
— Stadium (@WatchStadium) October 27, 2018
And for that, he has been dismissed from the team, his basketball career and possibly his education gone in the process.
Griffin told Stadium the attack was in self-defense after Johns “grabbed me by the jacket and tried to throw me down on the ground physically. We were against the locker, wrestling against the locker. He was grabbing me and holding me.”
The 6-foot-7, 215-pound Griffin said the coach “tried to wrestle me down, and I ended up on top. I’m not going to let another man physically do that to me. I punched him four or five times, then I stopped.”
Now whether he actually stopped at five punches is a matter of debate, but what isn’t in dispute is the effect it had on Johns.
The assistant coach, no small man at 6 feet 3 and 200 pounds, spent nearly eight hours in the hospital Monday and missed the entire rest of the week at work.
After a disciplinary hearing Tuesday morning, Griffin was informed Wednesday that he is on disciplinary suspension through May 31, 2020. He cannot go to class, cannot participate in any campus or school-sponsored events, and cannot even be on any property owned or rented by the school.
Furthermore, the junior from Aurora, Illinois, will not regain his eligibility to play college sports when the suspension expires in 2020, so his basketball career is done, his scholarship off the table, his welcome in New Rochelle, New York, effectively worn out.
Meanwhile, the school’s officials issued a statement of their own to Stadium.
“Iona College takes all matters of health and safety seriously,” they said. “We take every action necessary to ensure the well-being of the members of our community. The College does not comment on student disciplinary matters or student information.”
Griffin has a history of disciplinary issues, however.
He played his freshman year at Illinois State but ended up at Midland College in Texas for his sophomore year after the Redbirds forced him out.
When he was in high school, Griffin got suspended from the state tournament for other disciplinary problems.
This is a blow to Iona’s aspirations in the MAAC this year, but it’s a risk they accepted when they brought on such a volatile player.
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