I’ll get to the point in a second, but here’s the intro.

The Sports Illustrated story about “Not the Bruin Way” came out on Wednesday, February 29. On March 2, Nelson’s lawyer published his letter demanding a retraction. The same day, Nelson had his interview on Larrybrownsports. The headline in that article says “Reeves Nelson says SI took apology out of context, almost all stories are false.”

One digression. Think about that headline for a second. As far as I could discern, Nelson did not ask for that headline to be retracted. He said nothing about it, which, at least to me, means that he stands by it. I have one question – how can an apology be taken out of context? I guess what he means to say is that he’s not apologizing after all. (In fairness, he says he apologized for certain things, but not for what he was accused of doing in the article.) And the other part of the headline is that “almost all” the things are false. Maybe I’m being unfair and too literal, but if “almost all” the things are false, then some are true.

The first page of hits when I searched “Reeves Nelson” on Yahoo are shown below, in paraphrase:

Player Bio – uclabruins.com

Wikipedia (about 5 lines)

Reeves Nelson Image results

Reeves Nelson Facebook

Dismissed from team – fishwrap

Reeves nelson – Yahoo Sports (Rivals from when he was in high school)

Reeves Nelson Stats, Bio – ESPN

Nelson suspended – fishwrap

Reeves Nelson says SI took apolog6y out of context, - larrybrownsports.com (dated March 2)

“December 9, 2011 Howland dismisses nelson – ESPN.go.com

Daily Bruin – Nelson dismissed.

And now the point. It’s been a month, and I have yet to see the press conference saying that Nelson is filing suit against Sports Illustrated. I have yet to see anything in which anyone other than Nelson gives any version of any of the events. Nothing in public from any of the players. Maybe I missed them, but I don’t see them. There is nothing from Honeycutt saying his clothes were not in fact peed on. Nothing from Trapani saying his chest was not stomped on. Nothing in which Keefe is quoted about his shoulder. Nothing from Carlino.

And, of course, nothing from Nelson’s lawyers after they got the “F&*% You, Rude Letter to Follow” telegram from Sports Illustrated. There is a long, long time before the statute of limitation runs on Reeves’ lawsuit, but gosh, isn’t he concerned about vindicating his reputation? Every day that SI article sits on some NBA general manager’s desk is another day that Nelson doesn’t get signed to a lucrative NBA contract. And it’s all because of the Sports Illustrated article. The fact that he couldn’t cut it playing in Lithuania (or Neptune or anywhere else) has nothing to do with it. I mean, he’s a lock for the NBA – he’s already got his tats.

Being the civic minded Bruin that I am, I will continue to scan news accounts and keep watch for the promised lawsuit which will bring out the truth of all this. (I actually have a selfish motive, because when the lawsuit gets filed, maybe someone will notice Doughnut Dan’s deposition, and I’ll volunteer to help with the questioning.)