Don't ask, go to hell

 Couple of questions about the now-viral video of Bucks guard Patrick Beverley telling an ESPN reporter she wasn't allowed to ask him a question because she didn't subscribe to his podcast:

1. How does Patrick Beverley's head not take up the entire locker room?

2. Will Eddie Murphy ("I am Gumby, dammit!") play him in the movie?

Ay-yi-yi. I know arrogance is a common malady in professional sports these days (always has been, really), but Beverley has introduced an entirely new strain into the national bloodstream. I mean, it's not like he's LeBron or KD or Giannis. He's an NBA journeyman who's on his seventh team and has a lifetime scoring average of 8.3 ppg. Who the hell is Patrick Beverley?

And yet, there he was the other night, pulling high-handed BS far beyond his station in NBA life. He might only be Patrick Beverley, but he is Gumby, dammit!

Know what the scary part is, though?

Even though he's likely to be fined by the Association for this and for throwing a basketball at Pacers fans the other night, he might actually be ahead of the curve in future player/media relations. 

Now, as an old newspaper grunt, I understand the day is long past when athletes needed us to buff up their images and attract endorsements. Along came the worldwide web and Mom's-basement bloggers and, yes, podcasts, and with them an acceleration in how and through what conduits information (and disinformation) flows.

It's an instant gratification world more than ever now, and also a world in which athletes can bypass the media filter completely. Newspapers have tried to keep up, but the parameters by which print media must operate work against it in the everyone's-a-journalist-now reality. 

Thus we get Patrick Beverley pimping his podcast by dissing the media -- although telling the ESPN reporter "no disrespect" was a howler, considering disrespecting her was exactly what he was doing. And thus, the continued devolution of "journalism" into something that is nothing of the kind.

Telling a reporter he or she can't even ask a question without contributing to an athlete's own online "media" is only the latest step in that process. Rest assured Beverley won't be the last person to pull the stunt he pulled the other night.

Unless.

Unless, the reporter disrespected the next time goes ahead and asks his or her question anyway. And asks again. And asks again. And asks ... again.

Look. Every person under media scrutiny has the absolute right not to answer a reporter's question. Freedom of the press does not include that stipulation. It does, however, include the stipulation that the press has every right to ask that question, and really any question.

Plus, it's not like anyone can stop it from doing so. It is, in fact, literally impossible.

Which is why the other night, when Beverley told the ESPN reporter she wasn't allowed to ask a question if she didn't subscribe to his podcast, she should have immediately responded with a question: "And why is that, Patrick?"

And then told him to go piss up a rope.

OK. So maybe not that last.