Poaching

There's poached eggs, fish, chicken and pears, poaching of crops and rhinos and elephants (tusks) and also, alas, the poaching of basketball talent. A player succeeds and someone closes in wanting to all of a sudden be best buds.

Unfortunately, this also applies to some coaches at all levels.

Now any player has the right to move on, just as coaches, athletic directors and college presidents do.

That, of and by itself, is not necessarily condemnable. However, circumstances can be.

Any such movement should begin with the individual and have an honest and factual basis for doing so rather than the proverbial lure of greener pastures. Turning one's back on someone who took a chance and offered a spot, with no clear cut justification for reneging, is small.

Negative recruiting, while personally demeaning to all involved, is one thing. Getting into the head of an established talent and then getting him to transfer takes breaking bad to a whole different level. The term 'coaching fraternity' is something bandied about but there is no handholding and no choruses of "Kum-ba-ya" sung in Coach-ville.

Granted, graduate your guys and you can still find yourself at the unemployment office. Coaching is a business, defined by Ws and Ls. That can't be sugar-coated.

But calls and other contacts made to players on other rosters?

Not good.

Coaches just might have to resort to employing bullmastifs around their player corral as were used in England to fend off interlopers? If dogs can sniff out cancer, siren calls shouldn't be all that difficult to detect.

Now some will say it's not a big deal. That the coaching profession is just like any other, with the full spectrum of good and bad on display. That's true. But it doesn't make it right.

This piece will produce no Paul on the road to Damascus conversions but at least reiterates that it is a choice.