One of the key lessons in life, for some people one of the hard ones to learn, is to pick your battles. When to let some things just go in pursuit of a more important, larger goal.
With that in mind, we bring you two bits of news about Royce White, the No. 16 pick of the Houston Rockets who has an anxiety disorder and does not feel the Rockets have done enough to support him.
First, he is still not with the team and there is no timetable for his return, reports the Houston Chronicle. Rockets GM Daryl Morey said the two sides are “talking things through” but he has not been with the team for two weeks and it is not clear when White may return.
Second, White took to twitter — his preferred medium of public communication — on Saturday to attack Yahoo Sports writer (and NBC Sports Network NBA Insider) Adrian Wojnarowski for a week-old article saying what a lot of people around the league have been saying: That in his quest for what he sees as fair treatment for his disorder he is throwing his NBA career away.
@wojyahoonba Lol... So how good you are should determine if you get the proper support for a medical condition?Baffling!
— Royce White (@Highway_30) November 24, 2012
@wojyahoonba Things in the article aren’t true, and they were REPRESENTED as fact, not even a source to back them up! Where do they do that?
— Royce White (@Highway_30) November 24, 2012
Truth is there’s no CONSISTENT acknowledgement or protocol in place addressing #mentalillness, and that has/is creating unsafe workplace.
— Royce White (@Highway_30) November 24, 2012
White had nearly 30 tweets going after Wojnarowski, some pointing out things listed in the article saying they are not true (specifically that there were concerns about playing time that led him to leave the Rockets). Woj has, as of now, not responded on twitter.
White wants to change the perception of what people with an anxiety disorder can do with the proper support. He wants to create awareness.
But the only way he can really do that is to be an active, contributing member of an NBA team.
Wojnarowski is no doubt one of the — if not THE — biggest name basketball journalist out there but he is also not the guy standing between White and playing in the NBA. What Wojnarowski wrote in that article is the perception around the league when you talk to teams, no matter what White thinks of it. Woj didn’t create the perception, and he’s not the one that can change it.
Publicly, the Rockets have been very supportive of White. But privately they will tell you all the things they have done for White, including allowing him to take a bus to many of the team’s away games and getting his a psychologist to see in the area. White and the Rockets clearly still do not agree on what the level of support should be.
I’m not going to pretend to know what the best course of treatment and what the best way for the Rockets to help White is. That is something for him and his doctors to work out with the team in the talks reportedly going on. This is not a simple situation with easy answers. But if White wants to change the perception of him he can only do that as a member of the Rockets.
From the outside, from where I sit, sometimes it doesn’t feel like Royce White’s primary goal is to be an NBA basketball player. Maybe it is, but this comes back to perception and it doesn’t feel like that is what he wants more than anything else. And maybe that’s a good decision for him, maybe this to him is a fight for something much bigger and more important (and if so attacking Wojnarowski is a distraction from that). But know that the feeling around the league is that if he is not committed there are a hundred guys in line behind him who may not be as talented but are fully committed. And teams would rather have those guys on the roster. That is not what Wojnarowski made up, that is what is being said.
And again, the only way for White to achieve those goals is as the member of an NBA team.
I really hope this ends up working out for both White and the Rockets. I’m not sure I see the path to that happening right now, but I hope it does.