Buddy Martin Blog: Today I Promise No Negative Chatter. But The News Is Not Good For Mike White...

I start out this day with the conviction to renew my vow not to take everything—including myself– so seriously. Not to take the bait from the Nabobs of Negativism. Stress is overwhelming. So I’m invoking these rules: 1) Start out with something positive, like maybe a Norman Vincent Peale quote. 2) Make a joke, or laugh at something, even yourself. 3) Don’t get into one of those senseless debates on a meaningless, tired topic. OK? So that takes the subject of Mike White off the table, right?

It seems like angry fans are treating Mike White as a pinanta. (GatorBait Photo)

Did you hear the one about …? Well, hold on a second. I read a column by a writer I don’t know which excoriated Florida’s basketball coach as if he were a Trump Supporter at a Democratic Caucus. A recent article on InAllKindsOfWeather.com not only paints White as a hopeless cause, but suggests his replacement already.

If I am to believe all the diatribe on White in a column by Neil Shulman, I’d say the coach should not only be fired, but tarred and feathered and sent packing out of town.

But wait, I promised to avoid rabbit holes today like they were potholes on life’s highway. So let’s backtrack with this from Norman Vincent Peale’s “Power of Positive Thinking”:

“Become a possibilitarian. No matter how dark things seem to be or actually are, raise your sights and see possibilities -- always see them, for they're always there.” Norman Vincent Peale, The Power of Positive Thinking.

The news didn't get any better Thursday after learning that three-point specialist Noah Locke has chosen to enter the transfer portal and leave the program, meaning that the the shooting firepower has been severely diminished. And then there was another setback when Colin Castleton announced he would test his NBA without hiring an agent. Shortly before that, the backcourt took another hit when guard Ques Glover announced he was leaving through the portal, although his role had diminished considerably in recent games.

So it's been a tough week for Mike White, who no doubt feels like his island is getting smaller. Those kind of blows feel a little bit like piling on, but it is the nature of today's game. Now the heat is about to be turned up and Coach White's mettle is going to be severely tested.

Still, there’s always that possibility things could turn around for Gator basketball, even with the Locke and Glover transfers and Tre Mann and Castleton (possibly) leaving for the NBA -- and despite the illness of SEC Preseason Player of the Year Keyontae Johnson. Even though recruiting may not meet the expectations of those who consider themselves basketball “experts,” there are potential quick fixes out there now from the transfer portal (just ask Dan Mullen). Maybe there's another Locke in there. Two or three transfers and one outstanding signee could provide a quick basketball makeover. And what if Keyontae DOES come back to play? Isn’t it totally absurd to give up on the program? Apparently not…

“There is nothing on this blue and green marble that we all live on that will change my mind on Mike White short of literally winning the national championship or a 2013-14 type season that features a perfect 21-0 record in the SEC and a run to the Final Four. I don’t care if Florida goes on the road and beats Kentucky and Tennessee back to back by sixty points. I don’t care if Florida draws Kansas in the SEC/Big 12 challenge and houses them by forty in Lawrence. I don’t care if Florida goes 25-8, gets a 2 seed and makes a run to the Elite 8. We’re past the point of ‘fighting hard,’ we’re past the point of ‘growing and developing,’ we’re past the point of excuses, and we’re past the point where arguing that Mike White belongs at Florida is a rational opinion.” -- Neil Shulman, IAKOW

Hold on here. At the risk of sounding like somebody from an era of stuffed footballs, leather helmets and 30-foot, two-handed set shots for 2 points and not 3, when I was at Florida playing a little (very little) baseball, the head basketball coach was a part-timer, a football assistant, John Mauer. It wasn’t until Norm Sloan came along that it was a full-time job. So maybe my perspective from where the program has come is a little different?

Fire Mike White, one of six coaches to make the NCAA Tournament every year since 2016? Well, as some critics say, maybe he should just leave? Or how about that shiny new thing in the window? Could Chris Beard or Dana Altman or Porter Moser be the next Billy Donovan. Really?

Well, the next time a turnip truck comes through Gainesville, let’s out go to Archer Road and see if another Billy Donovan falls off the back of it.

Let’s get real! Even Joe Namath as a young bachelor back in his bar-hopping days trying to hook up with girls at a so-called “club” would sometimes say in resignation to his friends: “OK, fellas, it’s midnight. And Miss America ain’t coming through that door.” In today’s parlance, when it comes to hiring coaches, you’d have to add: “And neither is MISTER America!”

I’m a big-time believer in the first amendment and support the right of Mr. Schulman to express his frustration over the Gators blowing an 11-point lead with four minutes to play, despite already having one foot in the Sweet Sixteen. I agree that the coach-mandated slowdown was a mistake, given how Mann and his team were on the verge of blowing out the short-handed Oral Roberts Golden Eagles. Criticize, just don’t desecrate.

Go ahead and grouse, post on message boards, call a talk show, yell at your dog or cat or neighbor, but stop and think about the realistic options. Give a guy a little break after a season, however, in which he spent the night at the hospital, not knowing if his player was going to live through it – an experience that makes wins and losses seem almost insignificant.

The following Shulman evisceration of White was more than over the top:

“The past four years show that any success next year would be a fluke, an anomaly, an aberration, and would only buy him four more years of patience with his bosses as his program inevitably regresses to the mean.”

Maybe we need a little shot of Dr. Peale's Power of Positive Thinking. (Pinterest)

Let’s take a breath here and bring the author of Power of Positive Thinking back on stage:

“Any fact facing us is not as important as our attitude toward it, for that determines our success or failure.” -- Norman Vincent Peale.

I received a call this week from a former player who knows the inside of the Gator basketball program as well as anybody, but has been silent about the barrage of criticism heaped on White. He was livid -- not only angry because of what was said, but outraged at such uninformed opinions, unfounded criticism and unwarranted outrage.

“A hundred and eighty degrees the opposite,” he said, outlining the real problems he felt the program has endured. Among them: Lack of player leadership: “There have only been three great leaders on the team in the last 15 years,” he said. “Udonis Haslem. Al Horford. And Keyontae Johnson.”

Which accentuates even more how critical the loss of Johnson was.

Actually, he said, the program suffered a lag at the end of Donovan’s tenure because of his ostensible blackball from the Orlando Magic, who kept him from going to the NBA after he signed with them one day and changed his mind the next. “Billy really wanted to be in the NBA but was blocked.”

But I digress, on the verge of breaking promises. Let’s dig out of this rabbit hole with a little humor. Today’s corny joke:

“I went down the street to a 24-hour grocery store. When I got there, the guy was locking the front door. I said, "Hey! The sign says you're open 24 hours." He said, "Yes, but not in a row!"

Rim shot, please.

(I never said “funny” – corny!)

A final missive from Shulman's Defcon 1:

“He’s shown us too many times exactly what he is, and what he is -- a mediocre basketball coach -- not great, not terrible, but mediocre -- and a quick tour of the various athletic facilities at the University of Florida will tell you that mediocrity is not good enough.”

I need to leave this final Peale-ism right here:

“When you expect the best, you release a magnetic force in your mind which by a law of attraction tends to bring the best to you.” -- Norman Vincent Peale.

I was feeling all optimistic again, but after I finished writing this, I heard a jackass named Mac from Baltimore calling the Paul Finebaum to whine “I don’t want to see him as Florida Gators coach anymore.” When Paul asked him why, the best Mac could come up with was “because he’s not a leader of young men.” Based on what? “Well, I was in a bar one night and I saw four players in the bathroom …”

Before Mac could drum up any smut on him, Finebaum cut the guy off at the knees and took the bat out of his hands that he was using to whack Mike White like pinata. Seems like that has become a bit of a favorite sports by bullies. The bad news notwithstanding, I've added one more:

“Every problem has in it the seeds of its own solution. If you don’t have any problems, you don’t get any seeds.” – Norman Vincent Peale