Grown Folks Advice: Know Who's in the Room

Lately we have a few people, Dwight Howard and Gregg Williams, who are in need of some Grown Folks Advice.  Each of their situations is a little different, Williams made a career ending move and Howard just made a career limiting (very limited) move.  I do happen to feel that if they had taken this Grown Folks Advice, neither would have been in trouble.  This piece is dedicated to the following advice:  Know Who's in the Room.

Supposedly Dwight Howard had a conversation with someone in upper management and either asked that his head coach Stan Van Gundy be fired or he intimated that his head coach be fired.  In either situation, I imagine that Dwight was in a room with a person or some people and the discussion about his future with the organization came up.  I'm more inclined to believe that he was asked 'what would it take to keep you here long term?'.  Now for those of us with 'good non-gubment jobs', we know this is a setup.  This kind of question gives the person answering the question enough rope to hang one's self without even trying.  Did Dwight ask for his coach's head, who really knows, but if he did he had to know who was in that room or who that person that he was speaking with is connected to.

To break it down, if you ask me a question about someone in our organization and I don't know that the two of you are friends/acquaintances/golfing buddies I should be very wary of how I answer your question because I know that you are going back to that person as soon as we finish speaking.  It's expected, and you can pretty much guarantee that it's going to happen.  So, I imagine that Dwight gave the inclination that he and Van Gundy weren't BFF's and the person repeated this information.  Which in turn caused the most awkward moment in Orlando Magic history.

If Dwight would have taken a moment to understand who was in the room with him, crisis averted.  Or when in doubt just give them the honest truth, ' I don't want to be like LeBron, so I will just say that I have no idea what I'm going to do, but I'd like to think about what I'm going to do and then I'll say something that may sound silly, but you know I joke around, but you also know I don't want to be like Shaq and leave Orlando, but I want to stay, but I also want a chance to win a championship, but I also want to have fun,.......' - guaranteed that they walk out of the room and never ask you another question.

For Gregg Williams, let's forget that the NFL has already told your team that they need to watch what they say to their players, let's forget that the NFL is presently investigating your team for possible violations as they relate to a bounty program, let's forget that Roger Goodell has already made examples out of those that have crossed his lines since becoming the commish, and let's forget the fact that you are openly asking players to intentionally injure players on the opposing team, you have a guy sitting in the corner of your locker room RECORDING THE ENTIRE THING.  Williams can't be this dumb, so I attribute this to arrogance.  But back to the purpose of this musing, if you know who's in the room you can 1) request that the guy be removed from the locker room for a period of time prior to the start of the game 2) confiscate (in a nice way) his recording devices or 3) be careful what you say.

Again, if you know who's in the room, maybe your speech goes from what it was to 'guys go out there and give 'em hell!!!!'.  Sometimes you gotta be politically correct so that you don't mess up that 'good non-gubment job'.

Heed my advice and feel free to pass on to people who may need it.  Remember, we all gotta eat and we can't let our mouths get in the way of that.