As Ryan wrote earlier this week, L. Jon Wertheim’s piece in Sports Illustrated detailing the challenge facing Tom Crean in Bloomington is a must read for any Hoosier fan.

Inside the Hall caught up with Wertheim and asked him about the thought process behind the story, his dealings with Kelvin Sampson, Crean’s relationship with Sampson and more. Our Q & A is below:

Inside the Hall: Your story is the most detailed chronicle of the last 30 months in Bloomington we’ve read. Did you go to your editors with the idea or did they assign you the task knowing you’d do best at it? How long did you work on it?

L. Jon Wertheim:  Thanks. An editor at Sports Illustrated asked me if I had interest in the story, given my Bloomington ties and IU ties. I said, ‘sure,’ thinking I would write a Tom Crean profile and just sort of rehash L’Affaire Sampson. It occurred to me, though, that while the day-to-day coverage was quite strong, no one had really told the Sampson saga from start to finish.

The larger issues of race and culture and pressure to win become clearer when you can step back a bit. Also, as I spoke to people in town—everyone from IU administrators to folks at Rosie’s diner*— it was clear that the wounds weren’t entirely healed. I visited Bloomington in mid-August and worked on the story on and off for a few weeks.
* Visit if you haven’t already done so. Best pie you will ever eat.

ITH: You were able to talk to Kelvin Sampson. We’re not aware of him talking to anyone else on the record about IU. How hard was he to track down? Did he seem annoyed by any of your questions? Did you get any sense of regret from him?

(more…)

Out of all the places I write on these here Internets, there is certainly no better place than ITH to recommend one of my favorite books, L. Jon Wertheim’s Transition Game: How Hoosiers Went Hip-Hop. It’s a great read on the evolution of the game of basketball in the state of Indiana,  (and really, nationwide) from the short shorts and set shots, to the above-the-rim game, to the WNBA.

So, it was with great anticipation that I flipped open the Sports Illustrated that arrived at my office today to a meaty article by Wertheim — an SI staffer and Bloomington native — on our Hoosiers. And it did not disappoint. While there’s a good lot about Tom Crean and the challenges ahead, the parts I found most interesting dealt with last year during the tumult:

There were other signs that the program was coming apart. Reserve forward DeAndre Thomas was arrested for driving without a valid license and paid a fine. Guards Jordan Crawford and Armon Bassett and forward Jamarcus Ellis were each suspended by the program for undisclosed reasons. Multiple sources close to the team assert that marijuana use was common among a group of players, some of whom were made to take part in a drug counseling program set up by the athletic department. Despite a wealth of academic support, the team’s collective grade-point average plummeted from 2.89 in the fall semester to 2.13 in the spring, when players were cutting classes.

According to Eric Gordon Sr., his son “didn’t get involved in the smoking and partying” and, as a result, felt alienated from some of his teammates. Likewise senior co-captain D.J. White rarely spent time around his fellow players away from the court. “The kids weren’t on the same page,” says Gordon Sr. “They didn’t have similar backgrounds or experiences or goals, and basically all hell broke loose.”

I’m glad someone finally put the weed issue in print because those were whispers we certainly heard, and other places were floating them around as well. (Also: it’s not hard to draw the conclusion that those suspensions for “undisclosed reasons” were a direct result of players getting high. Rhymes with Contrellis and Contrassett.)

There’s a lot more I could parse out here (Sampson wasn’t even in the running for the job until his agent threw his weight around), but just go read the darn thing yourself. It’s worth it.