Honesty is the best policy

Ducking the truth only makes matters worse

Sports Illustrated senior writer Phil Taylor touches on a Hot Button issue each Monday on CNNSI.com. After you read Phil's take, give us yours.

It has been said that the first casualty of war is truth. Sports aren't war, but apparently the truth better watch its back just the same. It's getting increasingly difficult to find any sports figure who will give you the pure, unadulterated truth anymore. If an athlete, owner or commissioner says the sky is blue, don't believe them until there's been a complete investigation.

It seems that almost every day in some corner of the sports world someone is evading the truth, shading the truth, telling half-truths or spreading untruths. It doesn't matter what the subject is -- injuries, accusations, contraction plans -- no one wants to tell the straight story. Don't even get us started on résumés. It's getting to the point where a simple interview feels like a congressional hearing. Sacramento Kings forward Chris Webber is the latest athlete to issue a non-denial denial in relation to a scandal at his former school, the University of Michigan.

Former Michigan booster Ed Martin and his wife have been indicted by a federal grand jury on charges of running an illegal gambling business, conspiracy and money laundering. The Martins have pled innocent and were released on $10,000 bond. Webber was accused in the indictment of accepting $280,000 from Martin over a five-year period while Webber was in high school and college. Are the accusations true? C-Webb won't exactly say yes, and he won't exactly say no. "That's something people have been fishing and trying to get quotes on for 10 years," he told The Sacramento Bee. "It's 10 years ago, you know what I mean? I've said too much by even having a quote on it. It's nothing."

Webber has obviously learned his lessons well: Don't issue a "no comment" since that would appear suspicious. Talk, but don't say anything, at least not anything that could later be proven untrue. But at least Webber's evasiveness is somewhat understandable since it involves criminal charges. It's worse when a sports figure starts tap dancing around the truth in relatively trivial matters, as San Francisco Giants second baseman Jeff Kent has been doing lately.

Kent either broke his wrist when he fell off his truck while washing it, or when he fell off his motorcycle while doing wheelies. I don't much care which way it happened, and neither, I'm guessing, does most of the rest of the public. We'd all care even less, however, if Kent had seen fit to tell the whole truth and nothing but the truth from the start. In the face of mounting evidence that he suffered a motorcycle mishap, he continues to stick to his original truck-washing story, sort of. Like Webber, Kent has chastised the media for not taking his word at face value. But like Webber, he hasn't totally denied the allegations.

Why Kent would bother to lie about the incident (and no, it's not absolutely certain that he lied, but come on, if the motorcycle story was pure fiction, wouldn't he have denied it in no uncertain terms by now?) is hard to fathom. It's true that he could lose a hefty chunk of his salary if he's found to have been biking, since his contract forbids him from taking part in that sort of dangerous activity, but at $6 million a year, Kent can't be that worried about being docked. It's more likely that he thought his word wouldn't be questioned, especially about such a mundane matter. What Kent, Webber and others like them haven't figured out is that ducking the truth only piques our interest even more. It keeps the story alive. Any politician can tell you that it's usually not the lie that comes back to haunt you, it's the cover-up.

Maybe Kent and Webber are right when they say the media is too intrusive. If they're being less than forthright, maybe it's partly because they feel that they're being caged in by the constantly prying eyes of the press and public. But if that's the case, they should remember another thing that's often said about the truth: It shall set you free.

Sports Illustrated senior writer Phil Taylor writes about a Hot Button issue every Monday on CNNSI.com.

The opinions expressed here are solely those of the writer.

 

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