Watching the E:60 piece on Ray Lewis

#1
zjcvols

zjcvols

"On a Tennessee Saturday night."
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#1
I'm pretty sure if I could write a book about one athlete, it'd be Ray Lewis. Powerful stuff about his life without a father figure and him reconnecting with him.
 
#2
#2
Ray Lewis singlehandedly killed the Buckhead bar district in Atlanta. They tore my pub down as a direct result of his entourage killing some guys. Screw him.
 
#6
#6
Mixed feelings about Ray. He is so likable, but I'm pretty sure he had a hand in murder.
 
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#9
#9
n_huffhines said:
Mixed feelings about Ray. He is so likable, but I'm pretty sure he had a hand in murder.
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I'd like to think that his entourage killed a guy, and he got caught in a bad situation and tried to cover for them.

But, who really knows?
 
#11
#11
zjcvols said:
I'd like to think that his entourage killed a guy, and he got caught in a bad situation and tried to cover for them.

But, who really knows?
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The killings took place several blocks away from the club where the initial arguments broke out, on a side street past all the bars. The Lewis entourage was in a limo; the guys who got killed were ordinary guys who probably had to walk to their car. There's no way to know what happened, but it seems pretty likely that Lewis and his guys deliberately went after the victims after it should have been over. Whether it was to kill them, whether it was to just argue some more and it got out of hand, who knows? You have to be willing to draw really fine lines of distinction to argue that Lewis wasn't an active participant in a murder.

zjcvols said:
Why'd it get shut down?
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The Lewis killings glamorized the Buckhead bar district for the wannabe gangbangers. Crime increased. The ratio of black kids to white kids went way up, especially late at night. The white kids said screw this, and the bar scene started moving to Midtown instead (where it remains to this day). The Buckhead property owners panicked and found a developer who planned to come in, raze all the bars, and put in high end shopping and hotels. He tore all the bars down (including my Irish pub), but then went bankrupt when the market crashed in 2008, and now there's been a giant hole in the ground where Buckhead used to be for four or five years. Ray Lewis was the catalyst for all of it.

The funny thing is that before they tore it down, I actually saw Lewis in that Irish pub, having a drink with two guys who looked like lawyers early on a Saturday evening. A friend of mine -- a Taiwanese college kid who had no idea who he was -- kept bumping into him, and Lewis was gracious and cool about it. You'd never have known that he was the spark that set all the bulldozers running for blocks around.
 
#12
#12
Vercingetorix said:
The killings took place several blocks away from the club where the initial arguments broke out, on a side street past all the bars. The Lewis entourage was in a limo; the guys who got killed were ordinary guys who probably had to walk to their car. There's no way to know what happened, but it seems pretty likely that Lewis and his guys deliberately went after the victims after it should have been over. Whether it was to kill them, whether it was to just argue some more and it got out of hand, who knows? You have to be willing to draw really fine lines of distinction to argue that Lewis wasn't an active participant in a murder.
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Should Lewis have been there? No. Should he have left it alone? Yes. Should he understood he's an NFL player and let a petty argument go? Yes, I agree. Do I think he killed someone? I don't think so. Do I think he was trying to cover for his boys? Yes. Should he have gotten jail time? Yeah, he should have.

But, despite that incident, he's changed his life and has done an incredible amount of good since then. I like to think that there was some of that in Ray Lewis before the murders and he didn't actually kill someone.

That might be naive though.
 
#13
#13
zjcvols said:
Should Lewis have been there? No. Should he have left it alone? Yes. Should he understood he's an NFL player and let a petty argument go? Yes, I agree. Do I think he killed someone? I don't think so. Do I think he was trying to cover for his boys? Yes. Should he have gotten jail time? Yeah, he should have.

But, despite that incident, he's changed his life and has done an incredible amount of good since then. I like to think that there was some of that in Ray Lewis before the murders and he didn't actually kill someone.

That might be naive though.
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This is the prevailing national attitude toward Ray Lewis. I don't know that it's naive; I just think it's blind sports hero-worship. Lewis and his guys chased the other guys down and killed them. There were enough of them that it was easy to play hot potato and make it impossible for the prosecutor to figure out which ones actually wielded the knives. Lewis participated in the coverup. He's guilty in a murder.

Faced with the prospect that one of the best players in the NFL was a killer, America decided to pretend like he was just some guy who just happened to be in the wrong place at the wrong time and was guilty mainly of loyalty. It's horseshat. It's the same horseshat that allows Americans to ignore the fact that the quarterback of the Pittsburgh Steelers is a rapist. Yay sports!
 
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#14
#14
Vercingetorix said:
This is the prevailing national attitude toward Ray Lewis. I don't know that it's naive; I just think it's blind sports hero-worship. Lewis and his guys chased the other guys down and killed them. There were enough of them that it was easy to play hot potato and make it impossible for the prosecutor to figure out which ones actually wielded the knives. Lewis participated in the coverup. He's guilty in a murder.

Faced with the prospect that one of the best players in the NFL was a killer, America decided to pretend like he was just some guy who just happened to be in the wrong place at the wrong time and was guilty mainly of loyalty. It's horseshat. It's the same horseshat that allows Americans to ignore the fact that the quarterback of the Pittsburgh Steelers is a rapist. Yay sports!
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I can't disagree with that logic, nor can I disagree with the fact that sport stars usually get a free pass.
 
#15
#15
Blaming Ray for the downfall of the suburban bar scene in Atlanta for a murder that he was found innocent of is a little out in left field.

I suppose Ford can blame OJ for the downfall of the Bronco?
 
#16
#16
GahLee said:
Blaming Ray for the downfall of the suburban bar scene in Atlanta for a murder that he was found innocent of is a little out in left field.

I suppose Ford can blame OJ for the downfall of the Bronco?
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I don't seriously blame him for the death of the Buckhead bar scene, although there's no question that his crime was the catalyst that set the whole chain of events off. All he did was help kill two people; everything else that happened afterwards was obviously unexpected. But the murders happened 50 feet from where I used to park my car three times a week to go to the pub. I feel like I have a pretty good handle on the crime, the trial, and its aftermath.

I do blame him for killing two people, whether he happened to be the one holding the knife or not. If I hold a girl down while somebody else rapes her, and then help destroy evidence to make sure nobody gets arrested, I'm sure as hell guilty of more than being too loyal to my friends.
 
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